·566

They had come directly south, moving through the north-western portion of the ranges where the forest had not stretched so they could conserve power rather than expend it fighting the trees.

The trees could wait. Their time for destruction had not yet come.

The four Demons who were left were close to the maximum power they could achieve without Qeteb to aid them. They had drunk deeply of the souls available in Tencendor, and had deepened their own abilities, but until Qeteb walked beside them, snarling with the laughter of life, they were necessarily contained.

As Rox's death had demonstrated.

If Qeteb had been there, the struggle would have ended somewhat differently.

As they rode, each of the Demons' eyes drifted to the boy riding beside StarLaughter. Her get would provide the flesh and blood for their reborn saviour, but not the reborn son she craved. StarLaughter somehow believed — foolish birdwoman — that it was her son DragonStar who would be reborn with the power of Qeteb .. . but the Demons knew a little differently.

There was no DragonStar SunSoar, son of StarLaughter and WolfStar. There was only ever a scrap of flesh that was suitable to be preserved until the time was ripe for it to be

* 567 *

suffused with the life parts so horribly stolen by the Enemy. What StarLaughter had given birth to in the extremity of her murderous plunge through the Star Gate had been a mangled, dead clump of bloody flesh. Nothing else.

StarLaughter had clung to that scrap as she drifted through the stars, her madness and desire for revenge giving it form and life where there had been none.

None . . . until she'd come to the attention of the Demons. Not only was StarLaughter, as all the children who cried out for revenge with her, a link to the land the Demons needed to get to, she'd had the lump of lifeless and malleable flesh the Demons needed.

A house for Qeteb.

And so they'd given it back some form for the poor woman to cuddle, and so she had clutched it to her breast for four thousand useless years.

StarLaughter was completely, utterly, mad, and the Demons were not quite sure what to do with her once Qeteb was risen and the need for such tools negated. The Hawkchilds could still be useful — but StarLaughter?

Qeteb could decide, the Demons mutually, and silently, agreed. If he wanted he could eat her, if he wanted he could fuck her. They truly didn't care.

Of Drago they thought occasionally, but they did not waste any worry on him. He should not have survived the leap through the Star Gate, but he had. They should have killed him when they had the chance, but he'd done nothing with his unexpected life — no doubt he was now secreted in some cave dribbling resentment — and could be disposed of later, like StarLaughter, as Qeteb saw fit.

As everything would eventually be disposed of as Qeteb worked out his purpose.

For her part, StarLaughter was just as content as the Demons were. She knew the Demons regarded her son from time to time as they rode, and she knew that sometimes their unreadable eyes were cast in her direction. But that only

»568 ·

made StarLaughter happy. She did not trust them, and in time her son would dispose of them as he saw fit.

StarLaughter was very, very sure of that.

Now, she stopped.

"He is here, closel" she hissed.

They had halted their black creatures — no longer even vaguely resembling horses, but rather immense black worms with stumpy legs — a few hundred paces from the western rim of Fernbrake crater.

"What?" Sheol said vaguely. She, and the Demons, were concentrating on the still-hidden Lake. There was something there . . . not quite right.

"WolfStar!" StarLaughter said, and half-turned her creature so that it faced south. "So close!" StarLaughter clenched a fist and struck her own breast. "I feel him. Here!"

Sheol looked at her fellow Demons. WolfStar? And with him . . . herl

That other lump of flesh could be more useful than they'd originally planned now that Rox was no more.

"Where?" Sheol said, far more interested now.

StarLaughter pointed. "Through there."

Through the forest. The Demons vacillated.

"Not far," StarLaughter said. "But a few minutes walk." She paused. "Might that be too much for you?"

"We can afford a few minutes," Sheol said evenly, although she longed to tear StarLaughter to shreds. "Will you lead the way?"

They abandoned their creatures, leaving them to snout through the dirt for insects, and walked down the path StarLaughter indicated. The trees closed in about them, and whispers and eyes followed their steps.

Sheol's lips, as those of her fellows, curled in a silent snarl, and the trees retreated slightly.

StarLaughter slowed, and she raised a hand to caution the Demons. Then she lowered it and pointed into a small glade ahead. Here.

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The Demons nodded, and crowded at her shoulder to see for themselves.

An enchantment! Mot cried through their minds. He has been gaoled beneath an enchantment!

Before them WolfStar sat rigid, his back to them, beneath a glowing emerald dome. Several guards, Avar men, were spaced about the glade. They did not realise the presence lurking just beyond the first shadows of the bushes.

Do you recognise the enchantment? Sheol asked in StarLaughter's mind.

It is of the trees and earth, StarLaughter replied. Easily broken by such as you.

Sheol again resisted the urge to reach out and slice the birdwoman to shreds — by the darkness itself, she had almost outlived her usefulness! — and looked more carefully about the clearing.

/ cannot see her, she said.

Who? StarLaughter asked.

There was an instant's pause as all four Demons resisted the overwhelming urge to flay her, then .. .

The girl-child he had with him, Sheol said.

Ah, StarLaughter thought, the one he betrayed me for. Well, no doubt I can wreak my revenge on her as well. WolfStar must know where she is.

The Demons silently agreed.

We will remove the enchantment, Mot said, and those who guard him.

First. . . the men. Sheol opened her mouth, and her teeth lengthened and curved.

Her eyes glittered, and then changed, becoming dark fluid that roiled about in their orbits.

Her skin paled to a desperate whiteness.

The three Avar men, standing about the emerald dome, lifted their heads and stared towards the shrubbery where Sheol stood.

Their eyes were stricken . . . despairing.

570 «

WolfStar slowly raised his head and stared at the man nearest him. His back stiffened, and he turned his head very, very slightly, but otherwise made no reaction.

The Avar men were not armed, loathing any kind of weapon, but Sheol nevertheless had her way with them. One dug his fingers into his eyes, wriggling them in as far as he could go until he dropped dead to the ground.

Even then his fingers continued to worm.

Another took a great stone from the ground and beat himself over the skull with it.

When he, too, dropped dead to the ground, his hand continued to lift the rock and smash it against his skull until the crackle of wet bone gave way to the dull thud of pounded meal.

The third merely tore a wrist-thick branch from a sturdy bush and impaled himself on it. His body heaved up and down on the blood-soaked stick in a parody of love long after he had ceased to breathe.

WolfStar's head moved very slightly, enough so he could see all three Avar men from the corner of his eyes, but he otherwise still did not move.

He certainly did not look behind him.

Now the enchantment. Barzula waved a hand towards the glade, and a wind of immense power, and yet curiously without movement, lifted the emerald dome from WolfStar and smashed it against two nearby trees until it lay in useless shards amid the exposed roots.

WolfStar finally rose. He fastidiously dusted himself down, rearranged the feathers of one wing, and pulled one boot more comfortably along the close fit of his calf. His nonchalant behaviour concealed horrified thoughts. The Demons! Here! WolfStar cursed his stupidity. He had allowed himself to be captured by Drago and held until the Demons had arrived.

What would happen if Niah fell into the Demons' control? What would they do to her?

What would they do with her?

'571

Giving his breeches a final dust down, WolfStar slowly-turned around.

If StarLaughter had expected him to show fear, she was disappointed. Even without power, WolfStar looked every bit as haughty, and every bit as malignant, as the day he'd hurled StarLaughter through the Star Gate.

"I would imagine," he said to the bushes before him, "that after four thousand years, StarLaughter, you have thought of the perfect curse to assail me with. Why so silent?"

She stepped forth, and her appearance — the bloodied and rent gown, the wild eyes — finally caused WolfStar to raise an eyebrow. For her part, StarLaughter could do little but stare at him. For so long she had hungered for this moment, for so long she had —

"At least you have managed to come back through the Star Gate," WolfStar said, "even if you have taken your sweet time about it. Have you brought me power, then, as I requested?"

Hate rippled across StarLaughter's face, and her hands jerked into fists. "/ have power, WolfStar, and you have none. How does that feel? How does it feel, Talon-of-naught, to know you have no more sorcery than the smallest of worms?"

"Whatever I have done," WolfStar said quietly, his eyes not leaving her face, "I will go to my grave knowing I did not destroy this beloved land in order to —"

"But you were prepared to kill innocent children, weren't you, to gain power!"

"You were hardly innocent, StarLaughter. You lusted for power as much as I."

"Our son was innocent, and yet you murdered him," StarLaughter whispered. "Two hundred and more you sent to the grave to garner yet more power for yourself. Never think to judge me for what you would have done yourself had you the chance!"

"Our son was corrupted with your blood from the moment he was conceived. Stars only know if I was the

· 572 <

father, or if any one of the dozens of birdmen you coupled with behind my back planted him in you."

StarLaughter shrieked with rage. "I lay with no-one but you! And Stars only know my experience of love at your hands was enough to dissuade me from anyone else's bed!"

WolfStar tensed, and his eyes blazed. Had he ever loved this woman? No! How could he have done!

"Your frigid character mirrored itself in your performance in bed," he said. "I sighed with relief when you said you were pregnant. I would as soon lie with a corpse as with you."

It was too much; all StarLaughter could think of was that he'd murdered her, and then betrayed her with another. Her face contorted with loathing, she summoned every last skerrick of power the Demons had given her and threw it all at WolfStar.

He gasped, and collapsed to one knee, doubling about the crippling agony that had but a moment ago been his belly.

"And so I suffered," she hissed, "giving birth to your son in the lifeless wastes beyond the Star Gate!"

"Is that the best you can do?" he rasped, raising his face to her. "The best? I would have expected more from —"

She strode the distance between them to kick him under the throat, but in the instant before her foot struck home WolfStar seized it and pulled her down by his side. In one furious movement he straddled her back, burying one hand in her hair and pushing her face into the earth.

"In the dirt, StarLaughter," he said. "In the dirt, where you belong! I curse the day I ever took you as my wife. I curse the day I ever took you to my bed. I curse the day I —"

"For our part, WolfStar SunSoar," a voice thin with hunger said behind him, "we are truly grateful you did all the aforementioned. Your son has proved a boon to us."

WolfStar gave StarLaughter's head a sickening wrench, then he leaped to his feet and turned about in the same graceful movement.

He stared at the emaciated man standing before him, knowing instinctively who — and what — he was.

« 573 »

"Demon," he said, his voice flat, "get you gone from this land!"

"Never!" a woman's voice said merrily, and Sheol stepped forth, Raspu just behind her. "It feeds us too well, songless Enchanter, for us to ever want to leave."

"It is not your land," WolfStar said, hiding the revulsion that filled him.

"All lands that feed us are ours," Sheol said, gliding forward and circling WolfStar so close he could feel the graze of her robe against his skin. "But more to the point, has not this land of yours harboured what was stolen from us so long ago? You, and every sentient being as well as half-conscious beast that walks or crawls this land, is as much accomplice to the harm that was done us as those who brought our brother here."

"Then take him ... and go."

"Nay, good birdman." Sheol had stopped her inspection, and now stood close beside him, a hand lightly resting on his belly. WolfStar had to fight the shudder of revulsion that threatened to ripple through him.

"Nay," she repeated in a whisper. "We think we like this land. We have travelled homeless and rootless too long. This," she stamped her foot lightly, "will become our paradise. And you..." her hand rubbed slightly, and WolfStar turned his head away, his jaw tightening, "shall become our plaything."

"He dies!" StarLaughter shouted. "You promised me he would die!"

Sheol pressed the length of her body against WolfStar's, and what he could feel roiling beneath her robe finally made his body quiver with disgust.

"There are many ways of dying," Sheol whispered, and her hand suddenly shot down, her fingers tightening like talons about his genitals, "and many states of death."

WolfStar screamed, doubling over, and Sheol let go her grip as he tumbled to the ground.

»S74»

"Where is the girl-child you have filled with our property?" she asked tonelessly.

"Find her yourself, bitch!" WolfStar gasped.

Sheol half-smiled and she turned her head to Raspu. "My brother," she said, her voice almost gurgling out of her throat, "it seems WolfStar needs some persuasion."

She stepped back, taking StarLaughter by the arm and pulling her away as well. "Watch," she said in the birdwoman's ear, "as your murderer gets a fraction of what he has dealt out."

WolfStar blinked away the tears of agony in his eyes, and looked towards Raspu.

The Demon stepped forward, stopped, then tore the robe from his body. It was a mass of compacted sores, running with whatever pestilence Raspu had chosen to wear that day.

"You berate StarLaughter for her coldness amid the act of love," Raspu said, his voice far worse than Sheol's as it bubbled up through his throat from pus-filled lungs, "and yet I do not think you can possibly know the true coldness of love. Get to your knees, WolfStar, and then bend over, your face in the dirt."

"No/"

Raspu roared with laughter. "Do as I say, birdman!"

Power girdled WolfStar, and suddenly he was lifted up, thrown to his knees, doubled over, and his face pressed so far into dirt he began to choke on it.

Then, worse of all, he felt the presence of Raspu behind him, felt the Demon drop to his knees behind him, felt glacial hands tearing his breeches to shreds, and then felt the icy coldness of pure pestilent desire worm and shove its frightful way into his body.

WolfStar convulsed with horror, trying to struggle free from the rape being visited on him, but Raspu's power was too strong. WolfStar screamed, and then screamed again, inhaling dirt deep into his lungs as what felt like blunt frozen steel impaled his body, plunging deeper and deeper, until it

· 575 »

felt as if the contents of his entire abdomen had succumbed to the invasion and were being clubbed into pulp.

"Tell us where the girl-child is!" he heard Sheol's voice scream from somewhere very far away, but WolfStar did not answer, could not answer, and he did not know what was worse, the feel of Raspu's horror punching and pummelling its way through his body, or the sound of StarLaughter howling with merriment.

"How does it feel, beloved husband?" she shouted from somewhere very far above him. "Do you now understand why / did not writhe with enjoyment every time you penetrated me?"

Tell us where the girl-child is! Sheol's insistent voice screamed in his mind, but still WolfStar could not speak. His hands groped blindly before him, and his face scored through the earth again and again as Raspu pushed home his rape with frightful eagerness.

Then the Demon screamed himself, and jerked about like a marionette, and WolfStar felt pestilence bubble forth and boil through his body, searing through him until its caustic effluent bubbled up through his lungs and throat and he choked on the foulness, dribbling it through his clenched teeth and down his chin.

Where is the girl-child;¹

One of WolfStar's hands, seemingly of its own will, clawed through the dirt until it lifted and pointed, quivering as if in the final extremities of the shaking sickness, towards a group of bushes on the eastern side of the glade.

"Very good," said Raspu, standing and re-robing himself in an unsullied garment with a wave of his hand. "Shall we fetch her?"

StarLaughter stared at the immobile and expressionless girl and loathed her. This, this, is what WolfStar preferred to her?

"As WolfStar, so her," Raspu whispered in her ear.

»576»

 

StarLaughter looked at him. His cheeks were still flushed, and his breath trembled with expectation.

"But far, far worse," he said, and StarLaughter smiled.

She turned a little further, and there was WolfStar, crouched behind her, his face ghastly wan and still wracked with pain, his eyes deep with hate, his naked body bruised, bloody and still smeared with Raspu's attentions.

A thick leather collar had sunk deep into the flesh of his throat, and a golden chain ran from it to StarLaughter's hand. She had not realised revenge could ever feel this good, and she glowed with love for her companions.

Later, perhaps, Mot could assuage his hunger upon WolfStar, and then Barzula could plummet his tempest deep into her husband. StarLaughter smiled with pure coldness, and sent her thoughts and images spearing into WolfStar's mind.

He quivered, but whether with hate or fear she could not tell.

/ hope it is fear, earth-creeper, she whispered into his mind, for you shall have much to fear. Her smile widened. Again and again. Morning, noon and night.

"And there is always your son, WolfStar!" Sheol cried merrily, clapping her hands. Her sapphire eyes glowed very bright. "Don't you think he lusts for revenge as well? When cognisance finally fills your son's eyes, WolfStar, what revenge do you think he might like to visit on your body?"

"My son no more," WolfStar rasped. "If ever he was."

StarLaughter's face tightened, and she jerked the chain tight.

WolfStar choked, and fell over, his hands tight about the collar.

StarLaughter smiled sweetly.

"The Lake," Sheol said. "We have what we need, and we have wasted enough time here."

"Hardly a waste," StarLaughter murmured, and jerked again at WolfStar's chain. "For I find that I have enjoyed myself mightily."

«S77«

w:

rhat I did to Leagh," Drago said, "I can do for only a few more. There are potentially twenty thousand out there running wild through the Western Ranges. It would kill me to bring them all back."

"But —" Theod said, his face tight.

"Three more," Drago said, "can I bring back as I did Leagh. Only three."

"You said that —" Theod started to shout.

"The others I can save," Drago said, his own voice tenser now. He'd realised over the past two days what the effort to return Leagh back had caused him, and he knew he could never repeat that twenty thousand times. Not all at once.

And knowing that broke his heart.

"I can save them,"-he repeated, "but only by moving them on."

"Moving them on?" Zared asked carefully. He, Leagh, Theod, Faraday, Katie and Herme stood in one of the smaller chambers of the palace, a fire burning brightly and the drapes half-drawn to keep the bitterness of early spring at bay.

"Through death —" Drago said, and before he could say any more Katie finished for him.

"Into the field of flowers," she said.

578

Faraday and Leagh had told all present what they'd seen during Drago's enchantment, but even so Theod was slow to nod his head in understanding.

"Which three?" he asked.

Drago looked at Leagh and Faraday, then back to Theod. "Gwendylyr will be the first."

Theod's face crumpled in relief. "And then my two sons."

"No."

"Nof"

"Theod," Zared said quietly, but with clear warning. He stepped forward to a spot where he could intervene between the two men if need be.

"Then who else?" Theod spat.

Drago hesitated. Gwendylyr had been an easy decision to reach. With Faraday and Leagh, she would make the third in the triangle he'd need against the Demons. Drago's three witches.

"Jannymire Goldman," he said.

Zared's face reflected his surprise, as did Theod's and Herme's.

"Goldman?" Herme said. He had kept very quiet until this point, reluctant to speak of things among those he did not truly understand.

Drago nodded, but did not explain himself. He walked over to the fire, standing before it, his hands clasped gently behind his back.

"And who is the third?" Zared asked.

"If suitable," Drago said, speaking into the fire, "I will also bring back Dare Wing FullHeart."

"If suitable?" Theod asked, his hand jerking in a curt, impatient and utterly frustrated gesture. "If suitable? Pray, what do you mean by, 'if suitable'?"

Drago turned about, looking at Faraday to answer. She was a little disconcerted. Since their clash on the roof of the palace, Faraday had been unsure of Drago, or of her reactions to him. They'd passed some small time in

«S79»

company since then, but never alone, and they had maintained a rigorous politeness that tore at Faraday's soul.

But what else could she do? Did she want to live, or did she want to love?

Drago raised his eyebrows, waiting, and Faraday forced her mind back to the issue at hand. If DareWing was suitable? What did he mean? Then she remembered what Urbeth had told them, and she realised what he meant.

"We went to Gorkenfort," she said, "and —"

"What in curses names does Gorkenfort have to do with this?" Theod yelled.

"Listen," Zared cautioned. "And let her speak."

"And while we were there we met with Urbeth," Faraday continued, finally looking away from Drago back to the others. "You know of her?"

All nodded. The story of Urbeth had been one of the more puzzling of those to emerge from Axis' battle with Gorgrael.

"She talked to us of many things, among which she passed across the secret of the Acharite bloodline."

Faraday's mouth twitched in secret amusement as she told them, if not the truth of the father of the Acharite race, then of their potential for enchantment, but only once they'd passed through death.

Leagh gasped, and then a beautiful smile graced her face. "No wonder I feel ..." her voice trailed off. "No wonder I feel as I do," she finished quietly, and Zared looked at her wonderingly.

"So why DareWing?" Theod asked, and all could hear the unspoken question in his voice: if Acharites are so useful, why bring the Icarii DareWing back and not one of my sons?

"Theod," Faraday said, and stepped forward so she could take his hands in hers. "For countless generations before the Wars of the Axe, Icarii men took lovers from among Acharite women, believing their human blood would add vitality to the Icarii race. When these women bore children, the Icarii carried the babes off to raise them as full-blood Icarii."

580

"Thus many Icarii carry Acharite heritage in their veins," Drago said, "although they may not realise it. If DareWing is one of those, then he will be more than useful."

"But this Acharite blood must be thin indeed by now," Zared said.

"Even the hint of its memory will be enough," Drago replied.

"But my sons ..." Theod said helplessly, and Faraday's heart almost broke. She understood why Drago had chosen as he had, but the knowing could not lessen Theod's grief. She could not look him in the eye, and dropped her face.

Katie pushed between Faraday and Theod, and took one of the man's hands.

"Sir Duke," she said in a clear piping voice, shaking his hand so that he would look down into her face. "Trust in Drago. Your sons will be well."

Theod's face twisted, and he turned it away. "My sons will die," he said, his voice thick with emotion, "and I will mourn them all the days of my life."

Katie's hands tightened. "You will be too busy laughing with them to mourn them," she said. "Wait."

"We will go once dusk has passed," Drago said, "and the night is clean and peaceful."

The afternoon was spent either resting or pacing, depending on the temperament of each who waited. Zared sat a long hour at Leagh's bedside, watching her rest, until he could stand it no longer and got to his feet and wandered about the room, straightening that which did not need to be straightened, and neatening the already neat.

He did not like it that Leagh should go with them, however magically easy the journey that Drago might procure for them. She was still emaciated and physically drained from her ordeal, and her fatigue was doubled by the fact that her body sent what little vitality it had to spare into the baby she harboured.

And Zared did not want her to face any risk. He had lost

581

Isabeau through his lack of foresight — through lack of good sense, dammit! — and he'd all but lost Leagh the same way, and the gods must be crazy if they thought he might be prepared to risk Leagh again.

But he had little choice, did he? Drago was insistent that Leagh come with them.

Ah! The tension and worry was almost too much, and Zared determined to find Drago and insist that Leagh stay in Carlon. What could she do? Faraday would be there for whatever magical assistance Drago might need.

Checking to make sure Leagh still slept peacefully, Zared slipped quietly from the room and went to find Drago.

He found him, eventually, on the parapets. It was late afternoon, the dusk only an hour away but still currently safe enough to step into the open.

Drago stood at the far north-eastern parapet, resting his chin on his folded arms on the chest-high stone, staring out at the mass of animals that crowded against the walls. He had his copper hair neatly tied in a tail at the nape of his neck, and was wearing light-coloured breeches, calf-high close-fitting leather boots and a white linen shirt. He had his staff with him, but the sack was nowhere to be seen. Zared thought Drago looked far more elegant than he'd seen him in a long time ... and more like Axis than Zared felt either Drago or his father would care to admit.

"Some sword practice, nephew?" Zared asked as he walked quietly up behind Drago, and was rewarded as Drago jumped.

Zared grinned. "Your new-found enchantments have not deepened your hearing, then?"

Drago returned the grin. "I was lost in thought."

Then his grin faded, and he looked back at the creatures spreading like a bleak wave of sin beyond Carlon's walls. "If I had ever imagined this horror ..." he said softly.

"Then what?" Zared joined him in studying the force that swelled against the walls. "What? You would never have gone through the Star Gate? Drago, Fate has us all

582

twisted in its relentless talons. If WolfStar hadn't thrown those children through, if the Enemy hadn't crashed in this land in the first instance . . . well, what chance that we would be here at all?"

Drago's eyes twinkled. If the Enemy hadn't crashed here, what chance that we would be here? None! Not if Noah hadn't seduced Urbeth into his bed!

But he said nothing, and let Zared continue.

Zared swivelled from the view and leaned on the parapet with one elbow, studying Drago's now unreadable face. "Spend no time bemoaning the past, or the fates that brought us to this moment, but instead think of the Tencendor that awaits."

Drago raised one eyebrow slightly. "I did not realise you were the philosopher, Zared. Tell me, what is this Tencendor that awaits?"

Zared breathed deeply. "A Tencendor free of everything, dammit, but its own destiny. No prophecies, no long-buried Enemies, no Demons hurtling through space to tear it apart. Give Tencendor back the right to control its own destiny, Drago, and I swear that you will take your rightful place at its helm."

"Never say that!" Drago straightened, his violet eyes snapping with anger. "Once I have helped right the wrong that I helped perpetuate then I do not want leadership of anything save my own life and destiny. / do not want to snatch at a crown, Zared!"

Zared looked at Drago carefully, ignoring the jibe. "And if not you, Drago, then who? Neither Axis nor Azhure retain the right to lead the land and its peoples forward. And Caelum . . . well.. ." He paused. "Who? Who?"

A muscle twitched in Drago's jaw, then his face relaxed. "We are indeed confident of victory, Zared, if here we stand fighting over who wants the glory afterwards."

Zared's own mouth twitched in a smile. "I thought we were fighting over who did not want it!"

583

Drago laughed softly, then looked back over the creatures which thronged the plains beyond Carlon. "I do not like this, my friend."

"They increase by the day. The guards used to try and count them once a day, but they gave that up a long time ago. Now they just estimate the depth of the swarm about Carlon's walls."

"And?"

"And in the past week it has more than doubled," Zared said softly. "I think every creature — and every lost Acharite — that has been infected has found its way to Carlon."

To the Grail, and the Grail Lord, Drago thought, but did not speak it. "Zared . . . when did Theod arrive back?"

"Theod? The same night you and Faraday — and your menagerie — arrived."

"But how?" Drago waved a hand to the swarms beating against the walls. "How? I gained the impression he'd come through alone ..."

"He had. And Herme and myself had the same suspicions you perhaps entertain —"

Drago shook his head. "His mind is his own, even if it is over-burdened with grief."

"Well .. . Theod told us a remarkable story that, had it not been corroborated by several of the guards, I would find it hard to credit. He said that after he'd lost Gwendylyr, as the others, in the Western Ranges, a fabulous white stallion with a mane and tail of angry stars had appeared before him."

Drago stared, then smiled thoughtfully as he realised who the horse must be.

Zared only thought the smile a sign of scepticism. "Drago, this is true ... I believe Theod!"

"Go on, uncle. I am not questioning you."

"Well..." Zared repeated the tale Theod had told him. "When the horse approached the ranks of the creatures outside, stars fell from his mane, burning a path before and

· 584 »

about himself. The creatures howled and clamoured, but they could not approach the horse. And so this star stallion carried Theod to the gates."

"Star stallion," Drago repeated to himself. "How appropriate."

He lifted his voice. "And where is this stallion now?"

Zared shrugged his shoulders. "No-one knows. He vanished the moment Theod dropped from his back."

"North." Drago stared in that direction, then looked back to the closer problem of the hordes snapping and howling outside the walls.

"Apart from the obvious dangers to those who venture beyond the gates," he said, "have the creatures posed any other threat?"

Zared took his time in answering, and when he finally answered his voice was tinged with deep disquiet. "Look at them."

He waved his hand out, and almost as if the swarm of creatures had heard him, they screeched and screamed and howled, stamping a million feet from the tiny to the massive on the cold-baked earth.

Zared flinched. "Look at them, hear them. There are oxen and calves, vetches and ermine, cats and rats, snakes and creeping lice. Everything that once inhabited this land, that walked, crawled and hopped, has found its way here. I dread the moment that some of them find even the tiniest crack in the city's defences. Gods, Drago! When are you going to get us to this Sanctuary?" Suddenly all thought of leaving Leagh safe behind in Carlon fled Zared's mind. Safety in Carlon? It was an illusory thing. Those creatures outside were waiting for something, and Zared did not want to be here when that something arrived.

"When we come back from the Western Ranges," Drago said. "Believe me, that needs to be attended first."

Zared stared at Drago. "You need Gwendylyr and Leagh and Faraday —"

·585

r

"And Goldman and DareWing, if useful. Yes. Without them few people here would have a chance to get through. There are what..."

"Over two hundred thousand."

"Over two hundred thousand to get across to Spiredore, and I do not think Carlon has the fleet to ferry them over the Lake ... do you?"

There was a silence between them for a while.

"And then," Drago said softly, peering yet further into the distance, "there must be still more trapped in the forbidding wilds of Tencendor. What of those in Skarabost? And in your native Ichtar? And Nor, and Tarantaise?"

"You cannot surely hope to retrieve everyone?" Zared said.

"I must," Drago replied, and turned his eyes back to Zared. "I must! If I leave even one soul that I could have saved to feed the appetites of the Demons, how then can / be saved?"

Caelum leaned back against the wind and laughed. Urbeth's eyes gleamed.

"And then .. . then, oh two-legged one, the seal said to me—"

"No! No!" Caelum said. "I do not want to hear what the poor seal said to try and save its life. No doubt it didn't succeed."

Urbeth grinned. "You are right. I sank my teeth into its back halfway through its pleading. It was boring me."

Caelum wiped his eyes, still chuckling. He had never thought to be so amused by a story of a seal's death, but the way Urbeth told it...

They had sat here swapping tales for what seemed like months — or was it years? Caelum had no way of gauging the time. There was only snow and cold that somehow did not perturb him, and the leap and twist of flame and words.

He remembered some vague wish he'd had as an infant to spend months wandering the northern wastes and talking

with Urbeth, but as he'd grown he'd never found the time or the energy.

Now he had the time. He and Urbeth had shared not only tales, but also knowledge. Urbeth had talked to him about the craft and the Survivor. He told her of his sins. She'd shared her own sorrow at what she'd not done, and her joy at what she'd thought not to do, but had anyway. He'd hardly believed it when, halfway through one of her soliloquies, he'd realised her true identity.

Stars! She'd seen the look in his eye, and had nodded briefly, but that was the only concession either she or he had made to her ancient role as Mother of Races.

Mostly, Caelum had simply rediscovered the joy in life — something he realised he'd lost a long, long time ago.

"Ah," said Urbeth, looking over Caelum's shoulder at something approaching from the south.

He twisted about, expecting to see Drago, but all he saw were what he first thought looked like two small white donkeys, then gradually materialised into two great icebears, almost as large as Urbeth herself.

"My daughters," Urbeth said. "I would wager they have a tale or two to add to the warmth of this fire."

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587 «

61

Tlte Bloodied Rose Wind

"~\~\7"T ^l'" Zenith asked anxiously, staring at StarDrifter.

\ \ I There was peace between them, although as yet V T neither was at ease with that peace. Despite StarDrifter's unconditional love, and his immense patience in a situation where he'd never before had to be patient, Zenith still felt guilty. As for StarDrifter, he felt as if Zenith might flinch every time he so much as glanced at her.

"They are there," he said quietly. He looked beyond the screen of trees and across the Lake.

"Where? I cannot see them!"

StarDrifter hesitated, then pointed. "There. Between the holyoak and the whalebone tree. Do you see?"

She stared, then nodded.

"And you, Isfrael?"

Isfrael stood with them, his entire body rigid with fury. News had been brought to him but an hour previously of the corpses found in the glade where WolfStar had been kept. Isfrael did not know if the Enchanter had gone with the Demons willingly, or if he had been forced — more blood found on the ground suggested that more force had been required than persuasion — but Isfrael did not care about the niceties of the difference. WolfStar was now with the Demons, as was that half-dead but bewitched she-creature he had carried about with him, and that, as well as the deaths of three good men, was all that mattered.

»588»

"And does the sight make you reconsider Drago's plea that you evacuate your people into Sanctuary?" StarDrifter asked. StarDrifter could not understand Isfrael. The Mage-King accepted that Drago was the StarSon, yet stubbornly resisted any suggestion that he send the Avar into safety.

Isfrael did not reply, not even blinking as he stared at the dim dusk-cloaked forms on their black creatures in the distance.

"Your magic could not stop them, Isfrael." StarDrifter's voice had hardened. "They discarded it as if it were a wisp of a child's imagination. Would you condemn the Avar to death for the sake of your pride?"

"The forests —" Isfrael began.

"The forests will be burned to the ground when Qeteb rises," StarDrifter hissed. "I trust that you will enjoy watching as your people roast for your stupidity!"

Isfrael finally turned to his grandfather. "I know what is best for my people," he said. "Cease your useless interfering!"

StarDrifter's mouth hardened into a thin line. Curse Isfrael! He was as stubborn — and as blind — as a braindamaged mule.

Beside them, Zenith's breath jerked in her throat. Both StarDrifter and Isfrael stared at her, then turned to see where she looked.

"Oh dear sweet gods of creation," Zenith whispered. "It is WolfStar! What have they done to him!"

StarDrifter's eyes jerked momentarily to Zenith's face. What was that emotion in her voice? Horror? Or sympathy? Then he looked back to the scene before him.

The Demons advanced from treeline to water's edge with more than usual circumspection. There was something odd, something different, in this place, but they could not smell it or taste it or see it or hear it, and that made them very, very cautious.

Was there another trap of the Enemy's here? Another bridge to snatch at one of them?

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Their jewel-bright eyes glowed, searching the landscape. The Demons studied the terrain carefully, slowly, but their eyes did not linger when they passed over the line of trees that Drago had created to screen the Icarii evacuation.

Slightly to one side of them, and closer to the hidden entrance to Sanctuary, StarLaughter stood with WolfStar still collared and chained to her hand. The Enchanter crouched, as motionless as StarLaughter's still occasionally cruel hand would allow, for every movement ripped agony through him. He knew he'd been cruelly injured by Raspu's rape; not only the rape itself, but whatever essence the Demon had spurted into his body felt like it was eating away at his entrails, and corroding his lungs.

Even breathing was torment.

WolfStar wondered if he would survive whatever Mot or Barzula chose to do to him, but he wondered more whether Tencendor would survive what the Demons did with Niah. Was there a chance he could yet get her away from them?

Just behind StarLaughter and WolfStar, completely motionless and vacant, stood the boy and girl. Both were naked, their pale, gleaming pubescent bodies empty vessels for whatever would fill them here, and StarLaughter, in either cruel jest or hopeful anticipation, had put them hand in hand.

"Your son and your lover," she said to WolfStar when she'd done it. "Will you allow your son the pleasure of your lover? Will you smile indulgently when you watch them couple?"

WolfStar had turned away, refusing to respond to her taunts.

Now Zenith dragged her eyes away from WolfStar's battered body to the girl beyond him. "Gods! It's Niah!" she cried. "Oh dear gods, it's Niah!"

Her hands were to her cheeks, her eyes huge. Everything about the scene before her filled her with horror. Whether the sight of the Demons, or the bloodied and fouled WolfStar, or the horrible, horrible sight of Niah resurrected when Zenith had been sure that she had disposed of her once and for all,

«590«

Zenith could not cope with it all at once, and she turned away, leaning on a tree for support.

As it was with Zenith, so with StarDrifter and Isfrael, although they did not have the same depth of revulsion at the sight of Niah as she'd had.

"That must be WolfStar's son," Isfrael eventually said quietly, inclining his head towards the boy.

"Qeteb half-reborn," said StarDrifter, also taking pains to keep his voice low, although it was apparent the enchantment shielded them from the Demon's eyes and ears. He glanced behind him. The lines of the Icarii were thinning now. In the past few days most had managed to find their way down to Sanctuary, and it was only the few who'd had to come from outlying areas that were now scurrying down the stairwell as fast as they could go.

He turned back to watch the Demons.

"How do we go down?" StarLaughter asked. She was impatient to see her son gain a little more of Qeteb's life. The sooner he could wreak his own revenge on his father the better. And the merrier! StarLaughter spared a glance in WolfStar's direction. She hoped the Enchanter would survive to endure his full-grown son's hatred.

Sheol cut back on her temper. "We have told you before we do not go down again. From this point what we need comes up."

The Demons had grown in power feasting on the souls of the living creatures of Tencendor. They were nowhere near their full power, but they'd glutted enough to pull what they needed to them, rather than the other way around.

Movement. Movement lay below, waiting lustfully.

Sheol moved forward to the very edge of the Lake, the waters lapping her toes, then seized the neckline of her robe in her hands, and ripped the cloth apart.

She threw the discarded halves to one size, and stood naked before the Lake the Avar called the Mother.

» 591 »

StarLaughter stared amazed. Sheol had the form of a female dog. Only her head and arms were vaguely human.

Sheol dropped to all fours, her arms in the water to the elbows, her hind legs resting on the sand. Her body was thin and covered with a brindle pelt. A short tail stood erect, and between her hind legs hung pendulous dugs, as if she'd only recently nursed a litter of puppies.

StarLaughter's mouth curled in distaste. Couldn't Sheol have thought of a more appropriate form?

Sheol growled, and hung her head down. Saliva dripped from her jaws in a grey foam, reminiscent of the haze that issued forth from the Demons' mouths during their hours of feeding.

There was a rasping to one side, and StarLaughter tore her eyes away from Sheol.

Raspu. Panting, his eyes on Sheol's hindquarters, and StarLaughter's mouth curled even further in distaste. Surely not!

In the next instant Raspu had torn away his own clothing, revealing a body also shaped liked a dog's — a great muscled mastiff — but with the flexibility of a serpent, and then he was down on all fours by Sheol's side, quivering and whining and drooling.

Another movement, and Mot and Barzula had also torn away their clothes, revealing dog-like forms, and were prancing about in the shallows of the water, tipping their heads back to howl at the new moon just risen above the trees.

Their heads lengthened and sharpened into serpent heads, their tongues forking in and out, tasting the air.

"Tis not me who should be collared and chained," WolfStar said behind StarLaughter, and she turned and pulled viciously at the chain until he cried out and wept with agony.

"They are more faithful than you," she spat. "And dog-like yourself, with the morals of a snake, it is no wonder you appeal to their lusts!"

»592 »

She pulled and twisted the chain again, and was rewarded with a howl of pain.

"Grovel, WolfStar!" she whispered. "Grovel before me and I may yet grant you a speedy death!"

Only StarDrifter and Isfrael were now left to watch from the trees, their horror increasing with every moment that passed. As Sheol had revealed her bitch-form, Zenith had stumbled away, her hand to her mouth. WingRidge, who had been watching the three of them from the entrance to the stairwell, came forward, put his arm about her, and guided her down to Sanctuary. As they'd gone down, he had passed a quiet word to one of the Lake Guard, ordering him to stop the trail of Icarii and Avar through the trees towards. Fernbrake Lake for the time being .. . until the Demons had got what they wanted and had gone.

Only StarDrifter and Isfrael — and the unseen woman on the top of the eastern ridge — were left to witness the passing of Fernbrake Lake.

The four creatures howled and cavorted in the shallows of the Lake, pausing only briefly to urinate and defecate into the waters. StarLaughter watched fascinated, WolfStar appalled, although he treasured the time it drew the Demons' attentions from him. He sat carefully on the ground, bent protectively over the arm wrapped about his belly, leaning heavily on the other. Every so often he glanced at the boy — he could not think of this creature as his son, even though his colouring and features were so much like his — as also at Niah.

Niah! If WolfStar had not believed it would call unwanted attention to him, he would have bent his head and wept at his own stupidity.

Now the Demons had ceased their prancing and defecating and stood still in water deep enough to lap against their bellies.

One by one the Demons began to tremble. They stared into the Lake, their noses almost touching the water, completely rigid save for the curious quivering that wracked their bodies. The trembling increased by the moment until it

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seemed as though they were in the final moments of some massive, hysteric convulsion . . . and yet still they stared down into the depths of the Lake.

The water changed.

It happened so subtly, and yet so swiftly, that WolfStar was not sure at what point the Lake ceased being a liquid and turned, instead, to glass. Emerald glass that trapped the Demons' legs and, in Sheol's case, her pendulous udders.

Still the Demons convulsed, the bodies a blur as their muscles spasmed faster than should have been possible, and the convulsions quickly transferred themselves to the glass.

It cracked, and then the entire surface of the Lake shattered into millions of tiny pieces. A great wind arose from beyond the ridge of the crater, and swept down over the Lake's surface.

The glass pieces turned to dust, whipped up into a maelstrom against which WolfStar had to screw his eyes closed and hide his face under an arm. He wanted to reach out for Niah, to shelter her against this murderous whirlwind of millions of razor-edged glass pieces, but he was not able to fight its force, and could only concentrate all his strength on protecting his own body against its fury.

StarDrifter and Isfrael, protected by Drago's enchantment, watched silently. Tears streamed down their faces, and Isfrael reached out and leaned a hand on his grandfather's shoulder.

Who comforted who, neither knew, but both drew strength from the physical contact. A piercing scream rose on the shoulders of the wind, growing in intensity and density until it seemed as if it filled the entire world.

It was the Lake, dying, and weeping in its death.

On the ridge, the woman wailed with it, and sank to her knees, tearing at her hair with her hands.

Almost as suddenly as it had arrived, the whirling maelstrom vanished, and WolfStar blinked, cleared away the glass shards that had embedded themselves in his eyelashes and hair, and stared out at what had once been the Lake.

« 594

All traces of water and glass had gone, and the Demons — now back to their humanoid forms and attired again in innocent pastel robes — pointed and exclaimed excitedly.

What had once been a Lake was now a garden, but a garden such as WolfStar had never seen previously.

It was a garden snatched from the darkest pits of the AfterLife, a wasteland, an abomination. The ground, gradually rising to a small hillock in what had once been the centre of the Lake, was cracked and scarred, bare-baked earth with no grass, no life, and no hope of life. Trees stood bare-branched and blackened, as if consumed in some ancient conflagration that they'd never recovered from. Rambling roses hung from trees and rusted trellises, their leaves and blossoms only a distant memory, flowering instead with needled thorns that reached out like traps.

The centre hillock was barren, save for a windstorm that spun around and around on its crest, thick with dust and the thick, thorny tendrils of a rose bush.

"Movement," Sheol said with immense satisfaction. "Come."

StarLaughter tugged at WolfStar's chain, but he'd been ready for her, and rose and stumbled forward before she cut off his breathing. Mot and Barzula seized the boy and girl, throwing them over their shoulders, and striding into the wasteland with no mind for the thorns that reached out to scratch and mar.

WolfStar could not be so disdainful. He cried out each time a thorn hooked into his flesh, sometimes becoming so entangled in thorns that StarLaughter — the thorns appeared to completely ignore her — had to tug with all her strength to pull him free. By the time they approached the hillock he was covered in bloody scratches, and his wings had suffered so badly they were almost completely de-feathered.

"Movement!" Sheol cried again. "Quick, Barzula! The boy!"

· S95»

Barzula stepped forth, strode up the hillock until he was just outside the confines of the whirling wind. Then, in an abrupt movement, he hurled the boy inside.

Instantly, blood and flesh whipped out of the whirlwind as the boy's body was torn apart by the thorns inside. A piece of the ghastly meat struck WolfStar in the face and he gagged, reminded forcibly of the moment Zenith had flung Niah's poor dead body at him.

No-one else minded. The Demons and StarLaughter were leaning forward in their eagerness, their eyes bright, their breasts heaving with excitement.

"When?" StarLaughter cried.

"Now!" Mot screamed, dancing from foot to foot in an obscene gig, and as he screamed, so a man stepped forth from the bloodied rose wind.

WolfStar's mouth slowly dropped open.

What now stood on the hillock was a nightmarish parody of an Icarii male. He was over-tall, and his naked body was obscenely roped with thick muscles which bulged so thick at chest and arm and thigh that WolfStar could not see how the man could possibly walk. From his back sprouted fully developed golden wings — too fully developed, for they were half as large again as a normal Icarii male's, and feathers sprouted unevenly from flight muscles that bulged as thick as they did on the man's body. The hands that dangled at the end of each arm were like spades; the fingers were as long and as thick as every other appendage, but flexible nevertheless.

They would miss no crevice that could be exploited.

The man's face was curiously flattened, with a broad and thick nose and forehead under dense, dull copper curls, and light violet eyes that were narrow and cunning — almost piggy — rather than bright and clear.

WolfStar looked closely. They remained lifeless, for Qeteb still had to be animated with soul, but they were chilling for all that they lacked spirit. The mouth was wide, its lips thick,

« 596 »

red and moist, a pink flicker of tongue appearing between large, crowded white teeth.

Sheol turned slightly so she could see WolfStar. "The girl," she whispered.

"No!" WolfStar cried. "No!"

"Why?" Sheol said. "Is this not what you wanted? Mot! The girl!"

Mot stepped forward, the girl slung over his shoulder, but instead of hurling her into the rose wind as Barzula had done the boy, he handed her to the Qeteb-man.

"Take her," he said, and the Qeteb-man held out his arms and took her weight from Mot.

"The wind," Sheol commanded, and the Qeteb-man turned, but not before WolfStar had seen him run his spade-hands over the girl's breasts and belly ... exploring, his body instinctively reacting to the feel of the female flesh under his hands.

No! WolfStar screamed in his mind, but at that instant the Qeteb-man flung his Niah into the rose wind, and particles of flesh and blood again streamed out across the wasteland. When Niah finally emerged, completed in body, if not in spirit, WolfStar had to turn his face aside.

She was flawless, beautiful. Her alabaster body was female physical perfection, and glossy black hair streamed down her back to her buttocks.

Her face was stunning in its loveliness, fragile and yet strong at the same moment.

WolfStar knew in that instant that he'd lost. The Demons would use Niah, and her potential power, to their own ends. WolfStar felt nauseous: sick with self-disgust, sick with horror at how his plan to save Tencendor would now likely condemn it.

What had he done?

"There are many kinds of death," Sheol again informed WolfStar, her voice almost kindly, "and you shall now experience another one. She is female," she said to the Qeteb-man. "Take her."

» 597 »

The Qeteb-man seized the woman, his all-encompassing hands groping and kneading her unresisting flesh as he pushed her to the ground. The Qeteb-man dropped his weight upon her, forcing her to his requirements without any thought to the damage he might thereby do to her body. Coldly, his vacant eyes fixed on some distant point, the Qeteb-man drove himself roughly inside the Niah-woman and began to grunt and thrust, and each grunt and thrust ate into WolfStar's soul, tore into his being, and he lowered his head and wept as Niah lay on her bed of thorns, her hips and breasts jerking and jiggling with every movement of the Demon's frantically plunging body.

There, in that desiccated rose garden, Qeteb took his bride as WolfStar raved, StarDrifter and Isfrael watched in morbid fascination, and the Goodwife Renkin, still atop the ridge, climbed to her feet, her face hard, and descended into the forest below.

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62

A Song of Innocence

Deep in the earth beneath Carlon, a writhing, twisting mass of voles, rats, and sundry burrowing insects and rodents continued to scrape their way through the earth. Among them moved the patchy-bald rat, biting and nipping, driving them on, on, on, for the day was coming, the day when the Lord would rise, and preparations must be made and souls must be in place for that moment.

The Day of Resurrection.

Above, the night was deep and moonless.

Drago stood at the open doorway by which he had entered Carlon, his sack tied securely to his belt. Drago had begun to think of it as his weapons sack; his father may have once slung axe and sword from his belt, now his reviled youngest son slung a hessian bag.

The Wolven was slung over Drago's left shoulder, the quiver of arrows hung down his back. In his right hand Drago held his staff, and in the other he held Katie.

By his feet crouched the feathered lizard. Its growth had stopped, and it had now stabilised into a form slightly larger than a mastiff hound, but still retaining the shape of a lizard.

Behind Drago came Faraday, wrapped in a bright scarlet cloak that she had hunted all afternoon for in the wardrobes of the palace, and with two blankets under her arm; Leagh, equally wrapped in a thick and warm black cloak and also

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with a blanket; Zared, his worried eyes rarely leaving his wife; and finally, Theod clad in light chain mail under his cloak and with his sword already drawn in his hand.

He'd heard of the eels that had attacked Drago's boat on the way over from Spiredore. The gods alone knew what else the Demons might launch at them. Theod did not want anything stopping him from reaching Gwendylyr this night.

He concentrated all his thoughts on her, and pushed the memory of their two sons to the dim recesses of his mind. They were gone, sacrificed to Drago's unexplained plans, and Theod would not allow himself to dwell on them any more.

"Well?" an anxious voice asked from far back in the dark passageway.

"The boat is still here, Herme," Drago replied, and he stepped carefully down, wishing that if he'd retained only one thing from his Icarii heritage it could have been their exquisite grace and balance.

The feathered lizard leapt in, causing the boat to rock violently, and Drago planted his staff firmly down and leaned on it, silently cursing the lizard with every gutter and kitchen oath he'd ever known.

Once the boat had settled, he laid the staff in the belly of the boat, lifted Katie in and saw her safely seated, helped Faraday and then Leagh into the boat, and seated himself, leaving Zared and Theod to manage as best they could.

Herme appeared in the dark hole of the doorway. "Be careful," he said. "And return quickly."

"Keep safe," Drago said, then briefly smiled, nodded, and leaned his weight into the oars, sliding the boat silently out onto the waters of Grail Lake.

Faraday drew the cloak yet tighter about her and shivered. Animals of all shapes, sizes and breed lined the shoreline about the city's walls. Men and women, as naked and vile as Leagh had been, crept back and forth, snatching at themselves or at whoever came close. All the demented

600 .

were relatively silent, whether because of the night or some unknown plan, Faraday did not know, but they shuffled and moved in undulating waves, constantly pushing against the walls.

Pray we get back in time, Drago thought. He'd felt the increase in the power of the Demons, and knew they'd been successful at Fernbrake Lake.

How long would it take them to get to Grail Lake? Over a week, but less than two.

Not long. Not long.

Drago pulled harder on the oars.

The gigantic eels humped their bodies out of the water as the boat moved across the Lake, but they did not attack. Perhaps they could see the feathered lizard sitting sentinel in the bow of the boat, or perhaps their attention was focused on something within the Lake, for they rarely lifted their heads to watch the boat's progress.

"There is something different about the Lake," Faraday said, and Leagh nodded.

"I feel it, too. There is a ... a thickness . . . here which I do not understand."

Faraday trailed a hand through the water. "A thickness ..." she repeated, and then wiped her hand on her cloak with an expression of distaste.

Drago watched both women, sitting directly opposite him, with careful eyes. Leagh, while cautious about the danger surrounding them and their mission this night, was nevertheless serene and calm. She had come through death and found nothing but peace.

Faraday, on the other hand, was as jumpy as a cat. Drago remembered how sure she'd seemed when first he'd come back through the Star Gate. Gradually that confidence had dissipated.

It was him, Drago knew that. They'd fallen unwanted into love, and he thought that neither of them would find much happiness in it. Faraday did not want love, it had

»601

betrayed her too much already. And he? For weeks Drago had thought all he wanted was Faraday and her love, but after their conversation on the parapets, he now knew that even if she did come to him, would it be to him that she came, or the resemblance in movement and expression to his father?

Would she ever get over her love for Axis? She said she had, but Drago did not believe her. It continued to cripple her life, and Axis, utterly unintentionally, had returned to cripple Drago's as well. How pleased Axis would be, Drago thought, if only he knew.

Drago watched Faraday's eyes skim over the water, and remembered the passion in those eyes as she'd spoken of Axis and the nights they'd spent in love.

Would she ever look thus when she spoke of him?

He grimaced, and dropped his face, and bent back to the oars.

They reached the far shore without incident, and the moment the boat scraped against the gravel bottom of the Lake, all knew what was different about it.

The level of the Lake had dropped considerably, possibly by about the height of a man. Now they had several paces of dry lake bed to walk across to reach what had once been the shoreline and the now-waterless pier by Spiredore.

"But," Faraday said, turning about on the exposed lake bed in consternation, "how can this be? When we arrived here several days ago the water level was as it always had been."

"The Lake is drying out," Drago said. "The TimeKeepers have seized what they need from Fernbrake, and now all that remains for them is what lies here."

Zared looked intently at Drago. "Will the city remain safe? The gate we left by is hardly fortified. If the swarms of animals outside are able to reach it..."

"It will not dry out completely for a while yet," Drago said, and turned for Spiredore. "And we shall return within the day."

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Spiredore, ever faithful to those who served the craft, took them safely to the Western Ranges. A series of steep and narrow stairs deposited them before a narrow corridor that led into an indiscernible blackness.

"Where are we?" Theod asked. His voice was strained, whether from nervousness inherent in everyone's first experience of Spiredore, or what he thought he might find at the end of the journey, no-one knew.

"I imagine we will find out at the end of this passageway," Drago said.

They walked down the corridor in a tight group, their steps slow, their hands groping along the walls so that they might not be surprised by a sudden drop in elevation, or a turn.

Even the feathered lizard, normally so exuberant, slunk directly behind Drago, his talons now and then flaring and lighting the gloom.

Drago paused as his hand slid from the smoothness of dry plaster to the dampness of cave rock. He blinked, and then squinted into the almost impenetrable darkness.

There was a faint, rough oval of light ahead.

A cave mouth.

"We have arrived, I think," Drago said, "in the cave in which you and yours were so cruelly trapped, Theod. Be careful now."

There was a scrape of steel as Zared and Theod drew their swords, but Drago motioned the lizard forward. He would be their best protection.

"It's cold," Leagh murmured, and, like Faraday, hugged her cloak tight about her.

Drago motioned them to remain still as the lizard snuffled about the cave — gradually becoming less featureless as everyone's eyes adjusted to the night gloom — and then, as the lizard's body relaxed, led them towards the mouth of the cave.

"The twenty thousand were scattered throughout the ranges," Theod said. "How will you —"

»603»

r

"They will all be relatively close," Drago said. "This cave was the lodestone, the trap, and they would all have been caught here."

"But wouldn't they have started to move elsewhere?" Zared said. "To Carlon, perhaps?"

"Not enough time," Drago said. "They would have waited until the entire twenty thousand had been turned, and that could only just have been accomplished. Theod . . . how long is it since you left the cave?"

Theod calculated swiftly. "Six or seven days, or thereabouts."

Drago nodded. "A week? Then all groups must have come through, but only just."

"But they still must be scattered —" Theod began.

"Then we must 'unscatter' them," Drago said. "For what I am about to do, I need them all close."

Theod turned away, raising his hands in frustration, but Drago ignored him. He squatted down before Katie, and took her shoulders in his hands, staring into her face.

"Katie?" he asked softly. "Will you do it?"

She nodded silently, her face sober.

"I will protect you," Drago said, and the girl smiled and flung her arms about his neck, planting a kiss on his cheek.

Taken aback, Drago disentangled the girl's arms.

"We will need a large open space," he said. "Theod, was there anywhere near here that can fit a crowd?"

"There is a grassy flat at the foot of this hill," Theod's voice was becoming harder by the moment. "But it will not fit twenty thousand."

"No," Drago said, keeping his own voice even, "but enough for a crowd of some thousands at least? Yes? Good. And there are gullies leading towards this grassy flat?"

"Yes! Gods damn you, Drago, what are you going to do?"

Drago stepped up to Theod and took his shoulders as he had just done Katie's.

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"Theod," he said, and gave the man's shoulders a little shake. "Just believe."

Drago wore a gentle smile on his face that lit his eyes with warmth, and far more than the words it was that which relaxed Theod.

He nodded slightly. "I am worried for Gwendylyr," he said. "All this time, running about the hills . .. and in what state?"

"Theod." Now Zared spoke up. "Whatever else we have seen, it has not been corpses lying about. The Demons seize their minds and their souls, but they leave their bodies ... intact."

Zared had been about to say "alive", but alive did not quite describe the state of those held in the Demons' thrall, did it?

"We will find her, Theod," Drago finished, and Theod gave another nod.

"Good." Drago walked over to Katie and held out his hand. She took it, her face once again sober, and together they walked towards the entrance.

The feathered lizard ambled after them, but when the others made also to follow, Drago asked them to stay.

"You can see well enough from the mouth of the cave, and for the moment I would like you to remain there."

Drago and the girl walked carefully down the slope of the hill, occasionally stumbling over a rock hidden in a tussock of grass or night shadow. When they reached the bottom, Drago spent a few minutes studying the terrain.

The grassy flat spread in a rough oval shape perhaps a hundred paces east and west and some sixty paces wide. At the far western end a ravine stretched back from the flat into unseen darkness, and four or five steep-sided and narrow ravines snaked into the flat from the east and west.

"Perfect!" Drago murmured, then he squatted down beside Katie. He was nervous, for this would be not only dangerous for all concerned — and especially Katie if he

·605

didn't get the protective enchantment right — but would tax his own skill considerably.

Katie studied him, then reached out and took his hand. "You have come a long way from your pastry magics," she said.

"You know about that?"

"I know everything. You know that."

Drago sighed. Katie might only look like a tiny girl, but she was as old as the land itself. "Yes. I know that. But I thought some small details might have escaped your attention."

"Do this," Katie said, "for whoever still roams raving when Qeteb is fully resurrected will be beyond all of our help."

Now Drago looked truly startled. "I did not know that! Gods! I should have done more to —"

Katie covered his hand in both of hers. "You wasted too many years in self-recrimination, Drago. For now, you can only do your best."

He .nodded, then stood up, hefting the staff in his left hand. He glanced up the hill. Everyone was standing at the top of the slope looking down: both women waited in stillness, the men shifted impatiently.

Drago looked back to Katie, who had now sat herself cross-legged on the grass. He thought of the enchantment he would need, and almost in the same moment Drago felt the movement of the staff under his left hand, and with his right sketched the enchantment in the air.

He opened his mouth to ask the lizard to make it visible, but the lizard also acted almost without conscious thought. He lifted his right foreclaw and re-sketched the symbol in light.

Above, Leagh took Faraday's arm in a tight hand. "Do you know," she whispered, "that symbol almost means something to me."

Faraday frowned . . . what could she ... ah! She too could somehow feel the symbol reaching out for her, communicating with her in some undefinable way.

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"Protection," both women muttered at the same time.

"It is an enchantment of protection," Faraday added, then shook her head slightly. What was going on? It felt as if that enchantment was reaching out fingers into her mind, doing something, or appealing to something, but she couldn't —

"It's the Acharite magic in us!" Leagh said, still keeping her voice low. "We can understand it because we have both seen the field of flowers!"

Faraday's frown deepened, and she placed a hand over Leagh's where it rested on her arm. Was Leagh right? When Drago had included her in the vision, had he somehow forged the final link to her forgotten blood magic? She looked back to Drago.

He had taken the enchantment in both hands, and had now stretched it to over three times its original size.

Then he lowered it gently over Katie so that she was surrounded by it.

It glowed a deep crimson — and then vanished.

"It is still there," Leagh said to her husband and Theod, who had moved in surprise. "But invisible. The child is protected."

The child sat very calmly, her eyes downcast, and Drago sketched another symbol in the air.

This was stunningly complicated, and it seemed to Faraday that it would never end. The five fingers on his right hand seemed to move completely independently of each other, while the hand itself danced and wove through the air.

The feathered lizard watched, a frown of deep concentration on its face. Finally Drago's hand jerked to a halt, and he drew a deep breath.

"My friend," he said to the lizard, and the lizard began the tiring task of retracing the enchantment in light.

When it hovered complete in the air before Drago, it was of a strange light, almost a grey light, and to those watching from above it was very, very hard to see in the night air.

607'

But from what they could see of it, it was composed of hundreds, if not thousands, of intertwining lines.

Drago put down his staff and took the enchantment in both hands.

Then he began to compress it. It took considerable strength, for occasionally he grunted, and his shoulders visibly heaved with the effort, but finally the enchantment, now a small ball of grey light, sat in the palm of his left hand.

With his right, Drago drew an arrow from the quiver, pausing briefly to run his fingers through its beautiful blue-dyed feathers.

Then he placed the enchantment on to the arrowhead, shrugged the Wolven off his shoulder, and fitted the arrow to the bow.

"What is he going to do?" Theod asked.

"He is springing a trap," Leagh said. "That is all I know. A trap."

"I can tell no more," Faraday added at Theod's querying look. "Just trust him, please."

There was a twang, and the arrow shot into the air. Drago must be fitter and stronger than I imagined, Zared thought, for I had heard that only the strongest of Icarii could wield that weapon.

But Drago's lithe body obviously held all the strength the Wolven needed, for the arrow shot straight and true into the air, rising higher and higher until it was lost to sight.

Faraday and Leagh both suddenly shivered.

"We cannot see it," Leagh said. "But that enchantment has risen high into the sky where the arrow released it. It has expanded to a thousand hundred times its former size, and its grey lines of light now hang invisible in the night sky."

"A net?" Zared asked.

"Aye," Faraday replied softly. "A net."

And then all four jumped in surprise, for the arrow plunged down into the earth at their very feet. Faraday

608

leaned down and retrieved it, running her fingers up and down its length before finally stowing it under her belt.

Leagh's eyes widened slightly as she saw what Faraday wore under the cloak. "Faraday!" she whispered.

Faraday looked at her, the cloak falling closed about her form.

Leagh unwrapped her own cloak a little, enough for Faraday to see what she wore.

"Why?" Faraday said.

Leagh took her time in replying, and when she did, she looked at Drago rather than Faraday. "We have both walked the field of flowers, Faraday, and are thus sisters.

"And this night I think we shall have a third join us."

Faraday shuddered, clutching cloak tight about her with white fingers. "And Goldman and DareWing, if Drago accepts him?"

Leagh grinned, a wide, disarming smile, and looked Faraday in the eye. "But they are men, Faraday. Men! How can they be 'sisters'?"

Faraday stared at her, and then she laughed, and hugged Leagh quickly to her.

"You are not alone any more," Leagh whispered into Faraday's ear, "for you shall end this night with two sisters closer than any blood sisters can be."

Faraday blinked back tears, overwhelmed with emotion. Not alone any more? But she had always been alone!

"Never more," Leagh whispered.

"What are you two mumbling about," Zared asked.

"Nothing," both women replied as one, and straightened, Faraday turning away momentarily to control her emotions.

They looked back to Drago.

He was staring straight at them, and Faraday wondered if somehow he'd heard what she and Leagh had whispered.

"He will one day wish to retrieve his arrow," Leagh said, but Faraday did not reply.

"What do you mean, 'a net'?" Theod asked, having

· 609 «

completely missed the emotion and exchanges of the past few moments.

"Drago has constructed a huge net in the sky with his enchantment," Faraday said. "Neither you nor Zared were there to see it, but when Drago brought Leagh back, he enveloped her in an enchantment of light. He will do something similar here, methinks."

She fell silent, and watched Drago bend down to Katie to whisper something in her ear.

"A huge net," Faraday finally said. "I think he means to entice the twenty thousand, or whatever of them remains, to this spot, and the ravines and gullies surrounding them, then trap them under his enchantment."

"How so 'entice'?" Zared asked. He had moved to Leagh's side, and had wrapped his arms about her to keep some of the freezing night air at bay. For her part, Leagh cuddled comfortably against his body, relieved beyond measure that he was not only here, but chose to hold her so close.

"He will entice them with the child," Faraday said, and her voice hardened to brittleness. "Gods forgive him if he harms her, for / shall not do so."

Leagh twisted her face slightly to look at her, but she did not say anything. Beneath them, the child began to sing, and all eyes dropped down to her.

Drago had stepped back a pace or two, and now stood behind the child. With his right hand he set the staff firmly in the grass, and with his left snapped his fingers to call the feathered lizard to his side. It settled down close beside him, keeping its eyes on the child.

Both Leagh and Faraday could feel the crimson enchantment about the child, though they did not see it. It throbbed, and they could feel the beat in their blood.

The beat of the Star Dance? They only knew it was a beat that not only they, but the entire land of Tencendor throbbed with, and they closed their eyes, and swayed gently with the rhythm of the beat and of the song Katie sang.

« 610 »

The child sang a lullaby, one that all, save Drago, could remember their mothers singing over their toddling cradles. It was a sweet song, one that was redolent with innocence and the joyous dreams of the sinless. It spoke of all-encompassing motherly love, and of fields waving with grain and the cheerful scarves and smiles of the harvesters in the fields within which children could play from dawn to dusk without fear, and whose golden acres of grain dipped and swayed to the music of their laughter and song. This was a land without tears, a land without fear, and a land where all knew that death was but a short walk through the gate never dared into the next field ...

. . . the field of flowers, a field thick with peonies and cornflowers and poppies, and crowned with millions of lilies, perhaps billions of them, white and gold and crimson, waving their joyous throats at the sun.

"That is not quite the same lullaby that I seem to remember," Theod said softly.

"Nor I," Zared said.

Faraday smiled a little, but it was Leagh who responded, her hand on her belly.

"But it is the lullaby / shall sing our child to sleep with, methinks," she said, and smiled at Zared.

Katie sings of the land that will be, Faraday thought, once Drago brings Tencendor through death and into the field of lilies. And again, to her annoyance, she had to blink back tears. I demand that right to walk among the lilies, too, Drago, she thought, and I will not let love for you trap me in a dark world without flowers.

"Look," said Zared, and the tone of his voice made all raise their heads.

Shapes were creeping through the night towards Katie. Some slithered, some crept, some writhed on their bellies, and some crawled, but none walked upright. There were shapes so small they could only be babes in arms. There were shapes with wings, members of what had once been the Icarii Strike Force.

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Zared was cold with horror. Not so much at the bestial nature of what writhed and crept through the night, for he had steeled himself against that sight, but at the thought that among these beasts also crawled the Icarii Strike Force. He had grown up with the tales of their heroism and valour during Axis' battles with Gorgrael, and had grown up with the sight of them dancing in the air above Sigholt.

To think of them now crawling through the ravines and gullies through dirt and brambles towards this child — as the Gryphon had once crawled through the snow and ice of Gorken Pass towards Azhure — was almost too much to bear.

He turned his face away, unable to watch.

"They come drawn by Katie's song," Faraday said quietly. "Towards its innocence and beauty and hope." She paused. "They want to destroy it, and kill the singer, for of all things in their maddened world that they cannot stand, it is innocence and hope."

Zared closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then forced himself to look back towards the child.

She continued to sing, but her lullaby was now underscored by the whisperings and bowlings of those that crawled towards her.

"Gods," Zared said quietly, and that was all that any of them said for a very long time.

All through the night the twenty thousand crept towards the singer, some from over three leagues away. They crept through rocks and ravines, dirt and gullies, leaving trails of their blood and excrement where they went. And as they crept, they whispered and chattered, howled and shrieked, for the visions the songstress conjured in their minds were horrible to them, and all they wanted to do was tear her to shreds, so that the lilies and the field of flowers would fade from their minds forever.

When the first crawlers and creepers had reached within three paces of Katie, Drago stepped about her, hefted his staff, then speared it into the ground before her.

»612 «

Then he resumed his place just behind her.

The watchers above squinted, and wondered if it was the distance and height from the staff that made it seem so blurry, but Faraday and Leagh came to understand that the staff was quivering, just slightly, but so fast that its outlines were blurred by the movement.

Between the staff and the still-invisible crimson enchantment about the girl, none of the creepers dared move to within two paces of her.

They fell to their bellies, snarling and spitting, reaching out tentative fingers, then snatching them back in pain as they encountered the spreading vibrations (music) of the staff. Behind the first ranks an immense sea of creepers and crawlers gathered — what had once been men, women, children, and the Strike Force.

It was a ghastly sight. Zared, as Faraday and Theod, had thought that what they'd seen over past months had inured them to those who'd been taken by the Demons, but never had they seen this mass of undulating madness, and stench, and sores, and the sickening, sickening waste of lives and hopes. But they forced themselves to watch. These were people, subjects, friends, and, in one case, a wife and sons that made up this dark sea.

Leagh watched, not with horror, but with an immense sense of sadness. She could remember something of the dementia that had seized her mind and soul, and to see this many, this twenty thousand .. .

She wept for pity; the others wept with the horror.

It took hours for the twenty thousand to gather. In the lightening sky just before dawn, the watchers at the cave mouth could see that the entire grassy space had filled and, beyond that, ravines and gullies awash with people writhing in the dirt, reaching out hands, rolling eyes, and wailing, wailing, wailing.

During all this time, Katie continued to sing, and Drago to stand immobile behind her.

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The feathered lizard, while it had spent the first two hours on the ground by Drago's side, had eventually raised itself to pace back and forth, back and forth before Katie, in case any of the creepers overcame their horror at the vibrating song of the staff.

"Zared," Faraday said, and found her throat was so dry her voice was harsh and almost unintelligible. She cleared her throat. "Zared, Theod. You must now go inside the cave. Dawn draws nigh, and Mot will spread his vaporous hunger within minutes. Go."

"But Leagh —" Zared began.

"She will be well," Faraday said. "Their ravages cannot harm her now. Go!"

Zared looked once more at Leagh, but she gave him an impatient shove, and so Zared took an equally reluctant Theod back inside the cave's shade.

Far to the east, Mot reined in his black mount, tipped back his head, and stretched his mouth wide. Hunger filled the land.

Faraday looked to the east, and saw the pink glow of dawn stain the mountain peaks.

Then, just as the pink intensified into red, the light was clouded by the thickening grey miasma of Mot's hunger. Faraday could feel the familiar foul nibbles of the Demon at the edges of her mind, and she took Leagh's hand to reassure her.

"It is horrible," Leagh whispered. "I can feel him poking and prodding."

"He cannot enter, not now," Faraday said, and raised her eyes again to the befouled dawn light, "but he can still corrupt the land easily enough."

Mot had kicked his mount forward once his hunger had gushed forth, but now he pulled it to a halt again.

"Another," he said, his lips curling back from his teeth. "Another resists! How? How? How?"

· 614*

The two magicians, the two unknown magicians, were never far from the Demons' minds. Now another had joined their ranks. .

Several paces back, tied at his wrists by a short rope leading from the tail of StarLaughter's mount, WolfStar grinned.

"It is the StarSon," he said, hoping his taunt was truth. Caelum was all they had left now! "Moving against you. Caelum. Remember the name, for it will be your nemesis."

"Fool!" Mot hissed, and WolfStar doubled over in agony, but not before he'd heard the fear in Mot's voice.

It was all that enabled him to survive, for as the Qeteb-man had spent himself inside Niah, so Mot had taken his lengthy pleasure with WolfStar.

Something out the corner of one of Faraday's eyes caught her attention and she turned slightly.

"Drago!" she screamed without thought. "Drago!"

Startled, Drago twisted about and looked at Faraday and stared, stunned.

She was pointing to a hilltop in the south-east, but Drago could not tear his eyes away from her. In Faraday's excitement, her crimson cloak had fallen open and now flew back from her shoulders in the wind, tangling with the long tresses of her heavy chestnut hair.

Underneath the crimson cloak Drago saw that Faraday had finally abandoned the rough-woven peasant dress and boots. Instead she wore a white linen robe, startling in its simplicity, that fell in a deep vee from her shoulders to a plain leather belt about her waist (in which, he noted, was stuck the arrow he'd shot earlier), then in thick folds of drapery to her feet, now clad in light leather shoes elegant enough for the most discerning of queens.

Drago slowly ran his eyes back up her body to her face. It was alive with excitement, her green eyes sparkling, her mouth slightly open, tendrils of hair drifting across forehead

615

and cheeks. He had never, never, imagined she could be this lovely, this magical.

How could his father have ever treated her as he had?

"Drago!" Faraday shouted again, her finger stabbing impatiently at the hilltop.

Slowly, reluctantly, Drago swung his eyes about ... and stopped, even more stunned than he had been at the sight of Faraday.

At the top of the hill reared Belaguez. Stars foamed about his head and neck, and streamed in a great banner from his tail. The stallion screamed, reaching for the sky with plunging hooves, and the faintest remnant of pink dawn light caught his body, turning the Star Stallion red, and his mane and tail into raging flames.

"It is time," Drago said, and made a curt, sweeping gesture before him, like a scythe mowing sweet spring meadow grass.

With that motion he cut the supports of the enchantment. A gossamer web fell slowly, inevitably, surely from the sky, trapping the entire twenty thousand under its enchanted light.

Above, the stallion dropped to all four hooves, stared, and then disappeared down the far side of the hill.

63

The Fields of Resurrection,,, and ttie Streets of Death

L

eagh! Faraday! Will you join me? Bring the blankets."

¹ The women picked up the blankets where they'd laid them on the ground, reassured Zared and Theod who paced about agitatedly just inside the cave mouth, and began a careful descent of the hill. Every now and then they would pause and survey the scene before them. It was light now, and the mass of creepers were clearly revealed.

All of them lay still and silent under the enchantment, although eyes still rolled, and occasionally a hand or shoulder twitched. The net lay over them like a glowing silvery haze, its delicate strands barely visible.

As they neared the foot of the hill, Drago held out a hand to aid them the final pace or two.

"Leagh?" he asked, his eyes concerned. "How do you feel?"

"Tired," she said, "but not too tired. What do you need us to do?"

"Would you know Gwendylyr if you saw her?"

"Yes. She and I played as children, and I stood at her side when she married Theod."

Drago nodded. "Good. Faraday, do you know Dare Wing?"

* 617 »

She hesitated. "It has been many years. I knew him as a Crest-Leader when I was," she dropped her eyes, "with your father at Carlon."

Faraday paused, then looked up at Drago through half-lowered lashes. "But I think I would know him again."

Drago stared at her, then collected himself. "Good. We need to search for the three that I can bring back, and separate them from the others."

"There is no need to 'search'," Faraday said, "for are they not lost? I will lead you straight to them."

"Then why didn't you say so in the first place?" Drago said, angry that she had allowed the conversation to drift on long enough so that she could again mention the time she'd spent in his father's bed.

"You were too busy organising!" Faraday snapped, and then took a deep breath as Leagh stared at her incredulously.

"I am sorry," Faraday said. "It has been a bad night."

Drago gave a curt nod, accepting her apology. "Then find them."

Herme stood at a safe distance from the rosy dawn light spilling in the window in his chamber and fidgeted.

Something was not right.

Naturally, little had been "right" for months, but today the "feel" of something else not right was very, very strong.

"Ah!" he said, and turned from the view. "Guard!"

The door opened and a well-armed and armoured guard entered.

"Fetch Captain Gustus."

The guard nodded, and closed the door behind him. Within five minutes Gustus, captain of Zared's home guard, entered the room and saluted.

"Gustus." Herme indicated the barely touched breakfast table. "Have you eaten?"

"Hours ago, Sir Earl."

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Herme paused. "I like not this quiet, Gustus."

"Aye, sir. I know what you mean. The multitude outside is waiting. And more than waiting. They are ready."

For what?

Herme looked at him, noting that, like the guard outside, Gustus was fully armed. "How many men stand as ready to fight as you?"

"The city stands ready to fight," Gustus said quietly.

"They may have to," Herme murmured, then hit his fist on the windowsill in his frustration. "Gods! Where will they attack?"

And where was Zared? Where Drago?

Faraday hoped she would never have to repeat this experience again. It took over an hour of walking among twitching, fetid bodies, placing each foot carefully so that she did not slip on soft flesh or glimmering enchantment, before she found the three that Drago wanted.

She found Goldman in only the first few minutes. The Master of the Guilds was curled in a tight ball only four or five ranks back from the now-silent Katie, covered in what appeared to be a self-woven coat of twigs, leaves and the skins of at least four rabbits.

Faraday imagined they had not died well, but at least Goldman looked strong and well-fed.

Gwendylyr was harder to find because she'd crouched under a pile of gorse bushes torn loose by the mass during its crawl towards Katie, but, she, too, looked in good condition, although she had several scratches over one shoulder.

There were no signs of her two sons close to her.

Faraday found Dare Wing last. Like Goldman, he'd tucked himself into a tight ball, and then wrapped his wings about himself so that he was almost unrecognisable. They were tattered and torn, as were his forearms and chest, and he breathed shallowly and rapidly, as if he'd developed a lung infection.

»619

"Drago!" she called, and he carefully picked his way over.

Drago squatted down by the Strike Leader's head, pushing back the gossamer strands of enchantment until the birdman's face was free.

Dare Wing snarled weakly, but made no move to bite or snap, or even to raise his head.

Drago put his hand on the birdman's forehead, then ran his hand gently down his cheek to his chin, tipping Dare Wing's face to his so he could look him in the eye.

"Well?" Faraday asked.

"He has not done well crawling about the ground," Drago murmured. "He has picked up a ground fever, and it has run rampant through his body."

"That was not what I asked," Faraday said sharply.

Drago raised his eyes and stared at her. "Do not blame me for every wrong that has ever been visited on you, Faraday. I am guilty of many things, but of you I am innocent!"

Faraday's face flushed and she dropped her eyes and turned her head slightly away from him. Drago continued to stare at her for a few heartbeats, watching the flush on her cheeks and neck deepen, then he relented. "DareWing has had an ancestor somewhere in his not-so-impeccable pedigree who strayed, it seems. He carries Acharite blood.

"But," Drago dropped his eyes back to the birdman. "His fever is very, very bad. He may not live, whatever I do for him."

He fell silent, continuing to stare at DareWing, his fingers digging deep into the birdman's chin.

Eventually, Drago sighed. "I have no choice. DareWing could be the saving of this land if he survives the fever."

"Why?"

Drago looked back to Faraday. "Are you sure you want to get into a conversation with me, Faraday? Wouldn't that be dangerous? Might I not use the opportunity to imprison your soul in the frightful chains of betrayal?"

She said nothing, but her jaw tightened, and her eyes grew hard.

«620*

"All I want to offer you is love, Faraday. It is your choice whether or not you ever decide to trust me."

Then he stood up, not giving her the opportunity to answer. He hefted the staff in his hand and whistled to gain the attention of the feathered lizard, which sat by Katie's side.

It looked up, but did not move to join him.

Drago drew a symbol in the air, something far simpler than Faraday expected, and from his spot by Katie the lizard retraced the symbol in the air with light, not once, but three times.

Three visible enchantments of a deep violet light appeared, one hovering over each of the three Drago had selected.

He reached for the one over DareWing and pulled it down, wrapping it over the birdman's hands. Then he gently disentangled the grey gossamer strands of the holding enchantment until Dare Wing's entire body was freed.

"Help him up," Drago said to Faraday. "The enchantment about his wrists will make him tractable, and he will obey whatever you tell him to do. Walk him through this crowd until you reach the open space just behind Katie, then sit him down."

And before Faraday could answer, he'd turned and walked away, signalling Leagh to join him by Gwendylyr.

Faraday briefly watched him walk away, then bent down and pulled DareWing to his feet. The birdman stumbled, but he stood obediently enough, and responded to Faraday's hand on his arm.

"Come, DareWing," she said, and led him through the twitching mass towards Katie.

As they made their careful way, Faraday saw that Leagh now led Gwendylyr towards the same spot, and Drago was occupied with Goldman. By the time she had pulled DareWing into the open, Leagh and Drago already had their charges waiting.

"Sit him down," Drago said, and pointed to where Goldman and Gwendylyr sat. He turned his back on her, busying himself with the sack at his side.

621

"Drago," Faraday said, not moving to seat DareWing. "I am sorry."

He slowly turned around. "Do you trust me not to betray you?"

Faraday's face worked, and her eyes filled with tears. She dropped her face.

"Noah told you to be my trust," Drago said quietly. "/ am sorry you cannot do that."

"Faraday." Now Leagh was beside her. "Come, now, bring DareWing over."

Faraday nodded, and sat the birdman down. "You must wonder what is going on," she said, quietly enough that Drago could not hear.

"I have been through it myself," Leagh said gently. "I do not need to wonder." And she patted Faraday's arm sympathetically.

Once Gwendylyr, Goldman and DareWing were seated in a close group, Drago and the lizard worked the same enchantment they'd executed for Leagh.

This time, both Faraday and Leagh — their cloaks whipping back in the wind to reveal their simple white robes — helped him stretch the single enchantment over the three, and anchor its edges to the ground so that they were enclosed.

Then Drago withdrew the mixing bowl from his sack, and, slowly circling the enchantment, again drew pinch after pinch of what appeared to be dust from the sack which he put in the bowl.

"Do you know what this is?" he asked the two women.

Leagh just shook her head, accepting that whatever Drago did was sorcery beyond her ken, but Faraday thought deeply, her forehead creasing in a tiny frown.

"You have collected all sorts of things that you dropped into that sack," she said. "A piece of bread that you took from Leagh, leaves from Minstrelsea forest, dirt from several different places — "

622

"A lock of your hair," Drago said, and smiled a little at her.

Faraday ignored his smile. "You have pieces of Tencendor in that sack."

"Yes." Drago's smile widened fractionally. "Good."

"You are using ... Tencendor's magic, the magic of this land, to work this enchantment." Faraday bit her lip, still thinking. "But why Katie's blood?"

The girl had now moved to Drago's side, a bright crimson drop welling on the tip of her forefinger where the lizard had again obligingly pierced her skin.

"Don't you know?" Katie herself said, pausing to stare at Faraday.

Faraday shook her head, and the girl's face fell and she turned back to Drago silently, and added her blood to the mixture.

Drago accepted the blood, kissing Katie gently on her forehead, then stirred the mixture with his staff. Faraday opened her mouth, wanting to demand that either Katie or Drago tell her what the blood symbolised, but she did not dare interrupt the enchantment, and so she closed her mouth and remained silent.

Drago lifted the staff from the bowl and traced its end over the lines of the enchantment.

Instantly the scene about them flickered and faded, and Faraday found herself standing again in the field of flowers.

Turning, turning, turning as the flowers caught at her robe, turning to see the man who smiled and held out his hand for her.

The Demonic Hour of dawn had passed, and Herme took the opportunity to walk off some of his frustration and sense of impending doom to inspect the city's defences and state of readiness against ... against whatever it was that that howling horde outside might have planned for them.

Herme sincerely hoped that Drago and Zared would get back before the expectation in the air finally erupted. He was

· 623 ·

too old and set in his ways to cope with a situation this . .. abnormal, and without Drago's help in evacuating the Carlonese through Spiredore into this Sanctuary, then they were as good as dead if the animals managed to break through the city's defences.

He checked his wife and family, making sure they were in an easily defensible section of the palace, then joined Gustus and Grawen, another of Zared's men, in an inspection of the defences down one of the city streets.

Initially, the mood of the Carlonese heartened Herme. These people were not wide-eyed with fear, but narrow-eyed with determination. All the population, save the very young and the bedridden aged, had armed themselves as best they might against any attack.

Women held brooms and pans in white-knuckled grips, men had homemade pikes, clubs and blades. Children, ever inventive, had a variety of slings, stones and, down one street, a complex system of oil-filled barrels set in place.

"Any hoofed creature, or crawler, comes a-running down this street," one bright-eyed urchin informed Herme, "he'll get a slippery shock for sure!"

Herme grinned, and tousled the youngster's hair, then followed Gustus and Grawen inside a tavern, inspected the main rooms, then clumped down the cellar stairs. Unlike the atmosphere outside, here the tension and fear were palpable.

"Well?" Herme asked.

Two soldiers and the tavern keeper were crowded inside the cellar, and they glanced among themselves before one of the soldiers answered.

"Sir Earl," he said, hesitated, then simply pointed into a darkened corner of the cellar.

Herme turned and peered, and the soldier thrust a burning brand a little closer to the corner.

There was a cat crouched in a far niche, its head almost buried in an all but invisible crack in the floor.

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It was growling softly.

"Gods!" Herme exclaimed. "That's one of Drago's cats!"

Gustus nodded. "We've found them in several of the cellars, sir Earl."

"Then, by the gods! Get extra men in and about those particular cellars!"

Even as he finished speaking, there was a thunder of feet above, and then the cellar stairs were crowded with some thirty heavily armed soldiers.

"Already done, Sir Earl."

Herme nodded, and turned back to the cat. "Can any of you hear anything?"

The soldier shook his head. "We've crouched down by the cat, but have heard nothing save her growls. Cats have got better hearing than us, anyhow."

Herme took a deep breath, trying to force from his mind the imagine of hundreds of thousands of rodents crawling through the earth beneath his feet, and turned back to Gustus.

"And then there are the Alaunt," Gustus said, forestalling whatever Herme had been about to say.

Faraday blinked, overcome by the warmth of the sun and the heady scent of the flowers. The man had disappeared. She looked about her, desperate to find him again despite her resolve. Stately lilies rose to waist height about her, and in between their stems crowded a thousand varieties of poppies and cornflowers and peonies creating a veritable rainbow of colour to support the lilies.

"Faraday."

She turned at the sound of the quiet voice, but it did not belong to he she sought.

It was Leagh, standing amid the flowers several paces away. Her cloak had disappeared, and now she wore only the linen robe wrapping itself in the slight breeze about her gently distended figure. Her nut-brown hair tangled over her shoulders and in the lilies at her back and sides.

·625

Faraday moved slightly, and realised that she, too, wore only the linen robe. Even her feet were bare.

She tipped her head back and laughed, feeling the tug of her hair caught amid the flowers.

"Is this the Tencendor that will be?" she cried.

As if in answer, she heard the sharp rapping of Drago's staff, and it summoned her back to the grassy flat in the cold-swept Western Ranges, and the enchantment collapsing over Gwendylyr, DareWing and Goldman, and slowly sinking into their forms.

"What about the Alaunt?" Herme asked.

"It is easier to show you than to tell you," Gustus said, and began to climb the stairs.

Herme managed to suppress, with some difficulty, a frustrated curse, then followed Gustus, taking the stairs three at a time.

Gustus led him silently out into the street, down a block, then turned down a laneway that led them through to the next major street.

There several of the Alaunt were pacing stiff-legged down the sides of the roadway, their hackles bristling, low snarls filling their throats.

They were staring at the gutters.

One of the hounds raised a head and stared at Herme. It whined, almost as if it were trying to communicate with him. Herme stared at the dog, his fingers twitching with frustration at his sides.

"It is FortHeart," Gustus said quietly. "Sicarius' mate."

Herme wondered how Gustus could tell any of the Alaunt apart, but accepted his words.

"One of my men came to me with words of the hounds just before we left the palace," Gustus continued. "They've been stalking the streets for over two hours now."

FortHeart whined again, her entire body quivering with the strength of whatever she was trying to say.

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H«rme stared at her, fixated by her golden stare.

She whined yet once more, and suddenly Herme was in a very, very different place.

He stood in the streets of a ruined city. Buildings lay tumbled in great heaps of stones that made the streets almost impassable. He led a tense and nervous force down one of the main boulevards, but towards what Herme did not know. On either side of the boulevard the Alaunt ranged, stiff-legged and hackled, their noses and eyes probing every gutter and hole in the tumbled masonry and —

Someone yelled, and the Alaunt clamoured, and something horrible wormed from a crack in the gutter. It was grey and leather-skinned, its head encased in bone-like armour hiding silvery eyes behind narrow slits. Its mouth was huge and hungry, with fangs curving out in every direction. It was a —

"Skraeling!" Herme cried, and suddenly he knew where he was.

Hsingard. Hsingard! Hsingard, where Azhure had led a force that had been cruelly attacked in the streets from Skraelings that had wormed from the —

"Gutters!" Herme cried, and FortHeart yelped. "Gustus, they're coming up through the sewers\ They're coming up through the cursed sewersl"

"Gwendylyr!" Theod screamed, and suddenly he was hurtling down the slope of the hill so fast Faraday was sure he would fall and break his neck.

Behind him Zared came at a more sedate pace, although still as rapidly as caution would allow him. The sun topped the ridges now, and the dawn danger had passed, although Zared had been forced to hold so tight to Theod during the time Drago had collected the three and worked his enchantment over them he'd wondered if the man would have any unbruised skin left on his upper arms at all.

Below, the three were slowly rising from the ground, their

»627»

faces uncertain, frightened, and yet full of wonder at the same time.

All had woken in the field of flowers.

"Girls," Drago said softly. "The blankets."

Leagh and Faraday jumped, still lost amid the memories of the flowers themselves, and then hurriedly reached for the blankets, wrapping them about the shoulders of Gwendylyr, Dare Wing and Goldman. Of the three, Goldman seemed the most orientated. He rose to his feet, struggling with his balance, and gripped the blanket about himself, tearing his rabbit-skin and twig garment to the ground with a few angry jerks.

He drew in a deep breath, then looked about until he saw Drago standing slightly to his left. Goldman stepped over, still careful with his footing, and dropped to one knee before Drago. He took Drago's right hand, kissed it briefly, and stared into Drago's face.

"I am yours," he said, his voice intense. "Tell me what to do."

Drago nodded. "Be patient," he said, "and I will."

He walked over to where Theod sat with his arms tightly wrapped about Gwendylyr. The woman looked up at him, and Drago squatted before her and took her face in his hands.

She was lovely, even under the grime of the week spent roaming the hills as a wild animal, with very pale skin and black eyes framed by equally black hair. She was trembling, but whether from cold or emotion, Drago could not tell.

"What have you made me?" she whispered.

"My handmaiden," Drago replied, and leaned forward and kissed Gwendylyr softly on her mouth.

Theod jerked in surprise and some anger, and Drago shifted his eyes to the Duke's face. "She is back," he said, "but no longer exclusively yours."

Watching, Faraday felt jealousy so profound sweep her body she shivered violently.

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Leagh looked at her. "If you push him away," she said, "you must endure the resultant suffering."

Drago rose and stepped over to DareWing. The birdman had sunk back to the ground, holding the blanket tight about his body. His eyes were bright with fever ... and rage.

"Will you let me revenge?" he asked.

"Of course," Drago said, and put a hand on Dare Wing's shoulder.

"Three more!" Mot hissed. "What is happening?"

Sheol did not answer immediately, her eyes scanning the

western horizon, but when she did, her voice was very, very

cold.

"Something is not right," she said.

Drago rose, his eyes flickering to the east. "What I do now," he said, "will never go unnoticed by the TimeKeepers, even though they still be distant, and this is not their hour. Katie?"

She nodded, and from somewhere, none watching could tell from where, she produced a crimson lily. For an instant she held it before her, then she tossed it high into the air.

It floated for one breathtaking moment, and then it fell.

It struck the gossamer-encrusted mass of crawlers before her, and from the point where it first hit, crimson light radiated out along the strands of the holding enchantment.

Faraday's eyes widened, and she heard Leagh gasp beside her. The grassy flat, as the ravines and gullies, was turning into a sea of red.

A sea of blood.

"They are passing through death," Drago said.

"Where are my sons?" Theod shouted. "At least give me the chance to hug them goodbye!"

Drago did not look at him. "There is no need for goodbyes. There never will be again."

·629-

Behind him DareWing struggled to his feet and stood by Drago's side. Drago glanced at him.

"Be patient," he murmured. "Not today, but one day ..."

Suddenly Theod screamed in utter grief and fury. "They're gone!"

As he'd watched, the entire mass of people had . . . vanished. The crimson tide had spread to the further reaches of the huge crowd, and the entire twenty thousand had simply vanished.

All that was left was the crimson lily lying in the centre of the grassy flat, its petals ruffling slightly in the wind.

Sheol screamed, doubled over, and fell from her mount.

As one, the other three Demons also cried out, and convulsed, all dropping from their mounts and crawling and capering through the dust of the eastern Rhaetian Plains. Both WolfStar and StarLaughter stared in amazement, although each was consumed by very different emotions.

WolfStar slowly smiled, but StarLaughter blanched, her eyes wide with concern.

"They do not seem well, my beloved wife," WolfStar said, looking at StarLaughter slyly. "Why is that, do you think?"

She shrieked, and tugged hard on his chain, but even the pain of the choking collar could not wipe the smile from WolfStar's face.

"Do you think this is what the StarSon shall do to them when he inevitably meets your sweet companions?" he gasped, and StarLaughter's mouth hardened and she stabbed into him with her power as well until WolfStar's smile finally faded and he shrieked as loud as the Demons.

But her satisfaction at WolfStar's agony could not dampen her concern at the plight of the Demons, and she almost immediately turned her attention back to them.

"What's wrong," she cried. "What's wrong?"

Sheol was the first to regain some semblance of control,

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and StarLaughter finally perceived that they were convulsing with rage more than anything else.

"We have lost the souls of a crowd, StarLaughter," Sheol hissed. "A croivdl Something, someone has snatched them from us! Who? Who? Who?"

"StarSon Caelum," WolfStar managed to say from the dirt. "StarSon Caelum."

Sheol stared at him so viciously WolfStar cringed helplessly, certain she would set one of the other Demons to his rape, but she finally turned aside and howled into the wind.

"Attack! Attack! Attack!"

"They've gone, you misbegotten bastard! They've gone! Where are my sons?"

It was Katie rather than Drago who answered. She walked over to the lily, picked it up, then returned to stand before Theod. Very slowly she held it out to him.

Leagh smiled, as did Gwendylyr. Faraday's eyes filled with tears.

Theod stared at the lily, then at Katie.

She regarded him solemnly.

Theod's eyes dropped back to the lily, then he reached out to take it with a trembling hand.

Something unusual, but unutterably sweet, swept through him, and when he raised his eyes he found that he — and all the others still in the same positions about him — stood in an infinite field of flowers. Even the feathered lizard was there, snuffling through the flowers for insects. All the women, Gwendylyr included, wore the low-draped heavy white linen robes, while Goldman and DareWing both wore short tunics of the same material over leather sandals.

DareWing FullHeart very slowly stretched out a wing behind him — now fully-healed and glossy black under the bright sun — then the other, and smiled gently.

"Welcome," he said, "to the Fields of Resurrection."

·631

At mid-morning, in the hour of Barzula, on a frigid spring day in the beautiful pink and cream city of Carlon, the patchy-bald rat launched his attack.

All his life, and all the lives of his ancestors, he had planned and lusted for this moment. Now the two-legs who hunted and poisoned and trapped his kind would die, and they would die more horribly than any of his kind had in choking out their poisoned bellies through bile-stained teeth.

The patchy-bald rat was particularly crippled with loathing for the small male two-legs. He'd seen every one of his litter brothers and sisters tortured and finally murdered by the loathsome beasts. His litter siblings been staked out on their backs on the early morning cobbles of Carlon's streets, their legs stretched so that tendons popped and tore. The small male two-legs watched from the safety of the pavements what happened when a heavy cart rumbled around the corner and ran over his vulnerable, squealing brothers and sisters.

The male two-legs had clapped and hooted with enjoyment, especially when one of the rats survived for an extra moment or two of agonised screeching. The patchy-bald rat had never, never forgotten the memory of that screeching filling the early morning.

Now, still mourning, he had his chance for revenge.

Aided with the knowledge of a life spent burrowing amid Carlon's sewers, as with the power given him by the Demons, the patchy-bald rat launched a simultaneous attack into every one of Carlon's streets by almost a billion rodents and sundry crawlers.

Nothing, nothing, could ever have prepared the Carlonese for what happened next.

"Papa?"

Theod spun about. Two small black-haired boys were advancing hand-in-hand through the flowers towards him.

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They were dressed in short white linen tunics identical to those Goldman and Dare Wing wore.

"Tomas! Cedrian!" Theod swept them up in his arms, laughing and crying at the same time, and the boys peppered his face with kisses.

"It only takes a small effort, coupled with faith," Drago said, "to walk down the passage never dared, and open the door never opened into —"

He stopped, staring unseeing into the distance, and even Theod and the two boys fell silent and looked at him.

"Dear gods," Drago whispered. "We have lingered here far too long."

This was the hour of Tempest, and the haze of storm swept the land. The streets and the open spaces of Carlon were empty . .. save for the Alaunt.

As a grey tide of fur and claws and over-bright beady eyes erupted from every conceivable drain and crack, the hounds went berserk.

They wanted to hunt, but they had no-one to hunt with.

They wanted to track and kill, for the city was alive with prey, but there was no-one to tell them which were more important.

They snapped and savaged, and they killed many, but within heartbeats Carlon's streets had been overrun with millions upon millions of rodents, and even as magical as they were, fifteen Alaunt could do little.

The cats had as little success. They had leapt immediately to the fray, but they were only a dozen, and smaller than the Alaunt, and while they feasted well, they cleared no more than one street corner.

Meanwhile the rats and voles, earthworms grown fat on the rotting land, mice and black millipedes, even the rabbits, hares and foxes that followed in a second wave of destruction, all listened to one voice, and all had one target.

The small male two-legs.

· 633 »

And after they'd all been chewed and nibbled, the small female two-legs would become the next target, and after them the breeders of the small two-legs, the big two-legs, and then maybe, just maybe, the world would be a safer place.

And so, in an attack that left every soldier and guard stunned and confused, the invading rodents targeted every child within the city. Not only did children tend to be in places relatively unprotected by the army and militia — attics, cupboards, pantries, anywhere their parents thought they'd be out of the way — if a soldier or guard was there to protect them, then they found that scrambling, tiny-bodied rodents, tens of thousands of scrambling, tiny rodents, were virtually impossible to smite and kill with cumbersome pikes, swords or arrows. A man might kill several, maybe a dozen, but then he'd be dead himself, covered in rats or mice, his throat choking with a thousand millipedes.

It made the older among them yearn for the relative certainty of a large-bodied Skraeling.

The youngster who'd impressed Herme with his plan to empty barrels of oil down city streets was among the first to die. The children — and adults, for that matter — had planned as best they could for an invasion of the animals, but nothing had prepared them for this tiny-bodied flood.

The boys, the small male two-legs, died horribly. None of them was granted a quick death. While a score of rats would attack a face, keeping hands occupied, thirty or forty mice would chew into a belly, diving through entrails and tunnelling up through diaphragms and lung cavities until the boy began to cough mice and whatever millipedes and centipedes that had scrambled in after the initial invasion.

Then, if circumstances permitted it, the rats and sundry rodents would leap off the dying two-leg's body and sit in a fascinated circle about him, listening to his frenzied screeches and wails, watching his agonised convulsions, their whiskers twitching in anticipation as the blood ran in bright rivulets towards them.

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There was little that Herme, or any other captain, lieutenant or even general horse waterer could do, save shout orders for people to climb as high as they could and block exits to floors below.

The streets are awash! To the attic, to the attic!

And when families and army units ran for the attics, and thought of some means whereby to block the grey writhing mass on the stairs behind them, not a few instinctively grabbed at lamps and candles, and threw them down to erect a moat of flame between themselves and the rodents.

But it was not only the rodents that went up in flames.

Within a quarter hour of the initial attack, Carlon was on fire.

Beyond the walls the bestial army howled and shrieked, scrabbling at the gates in the hope that soon guards would be dead and bolts chewed through.

Beyond both walls and demonic force, and totally unnoticed by any, the waters of Grail Lake began to quiver ... almost as if something within their depths was moving.

Upwards.

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64

The Doorways