Chapter 18

The Joy of the Hunt

"Dare Wing," DragonStar said when he returned to the foot of the Icescarp Alps, "I must get back to Sanctuary ..." He told Dare Wing about Spiredore's eventual death.

"When that happens then I do not know of an effective way to move so quickly between Sanctuary and this wasteland."

"And what will you do once you get to Sanctuary?"

DragonStar looked about the landscape for a few moments, avoiding the question. What would he do?

"I am torn, DareWing," he eventually said, "between simply bringing you and the Strike Force back into Sanctuary with me, or leaving you here."

DareWing shook his head. "The Strike Force cannot easily go into Sanctuary. They ... they ..."

"They are too far beyond death to be able to tolerate its —" DragonStar hesitated, "— to tolerate its confines."

"You must bring the other witches out," DareWing said. "Out into the wasteland."

"Yes," DragonStar sighed. "I know that. We will do no good huddled in Sanctuary, but the thought of exposing them prematurely to the Demons ... DareWing, I must go back and get them, but there is something you should know."

"Yes?"

"The Enchanted Song Book was not a book of solutions, my friend, but a sad list of errors. The Song Book told us what not to do."

"And so what is left?"

"Everything the Demons cannot stand," DragonStar said softly.

DareWing made to say something, shifting impatiently, but DragonStar laid a hand on his shoulder and quieted him.

"Listen to me. I am going back to Sanctuary, and I will come back with the girls and Goldman.

DareWing, will you start to clear Tencendor while I am gone? The north must be crawling with corruption, and all of Tencendor must be cleansed before it can be reborn."

"And if I meet up with one of the Demons?"

DragonStar took his time in replying, his ringers gently tapping the book, his eyes unfocused.

He remembered what WolfStar had told him about Caelum's death, and he remembered what Fischer had said. Reflecting the Demons' malevolence back at them had not truly defeated them: it had only driven the evil underground for it to fester.

Evil cannot be destroyed — and certainly not by using evil against evil.

A word of love had driven Qeteb to distraction.

DragonStar's face softened, and he smiled.

"DareWing," he said, and put a hand on the other's shoulder, "let me tell you what I have learned this day ..."

DareWing wheeled the Strike Force over the Alps. DragonStar had returned to Sanctuary with his assorted animals. Having heard what the StarSon had theorised, DareWing almost wished he did meet up with one of the Demons. Either DragonStar's theory was correct, in which case DareWing could deliver to the Demons an almighty shock, or he was incorrect, in which case it was better for DareWing to fail than DragonStar. DareWing could feel the probing of Sheol in his mind — it was mid-afternoon now, and Despair reigned over the wasteland — and he smiled ...

He understood very well that although Sheol could not touch him, she could nevertheless feel him, as she could feel every one of the almost two thousand members of the Strike Force.

DareWing's smile widened, and he soared in the air, and he spoke to his command.

She hissed and crouched down on all fours about the fire she shared with the other Demons.

Qeteb stared curiously at her, one hand paused in the act of raising a half-burned, half-raw joint of flesh and bone (it was possibly cow, but it had transformed so much during its demented life that it was now impossible to determine its original species). "What is it?"

"They are back!"

"Who?" Qeteb threw away the half-eaten joint and stood up.

Sheol's form flowed into that of a misshapen cat, then a pig, then finally back into a vaguely humanoid form again. She got to her feet, brushing down her gown with something resembling disdain.

"Those who can resist us."

Qeteb grunted. "How many?"

"Many."

"Where?"

"To the north."

Qeteb thought, and then smiled behind his iron mask. "Go," he said to her, and Sheol gurgled with happiness, and her form shifted yet again into that of a winged serpent, and she lifted (wriggled) into the air and disappeared into the raging winds of dust.

DareWing soared his command into the sky above the eastern Icescarp Alps. His sharp eyes scoured the landscape below him, but there was nothing but the plunge of icy black cliff and the drift of frost.

Nothing lived here, apparently.

South? No, best to check the eastern regions before he sallied south, thus DareWing led his command — deadly jewel-bright silence — over the flat plains between the Icescarp Alps and the coast of the Widowmaker Sea, an area that had once been, before the wasteland encroached, the approaches to the unmapped northern tundra of the Avarinheim.

"The Demonic hordes have not travelled this far north," DareWing eventually said to the Icarii-wraith flying beside him. "We may have to —"

And he stopped, stunned. Behind him a low buzz of unworded comment rose from the Strike Force. There was a pack of something moving south towards the wasteland, but it was not what DareWing and his Strike Force had thought to encounter.

"Stars in heaven," DareWing whispered. "Skraelings!"

"Skraelings!" DareWing said again, hardly able to believe what his eyes told him were there.

Skraelings?

Hadn't Azhure destroyed all Skraelings?

But no, she hadn't. Only the ones in Tencendor itself. The unmapped tundras in the extreme north had always had a breeding population of the creatures, and DareWing supposed that now the forests had gone, they would almost naturally drift south.

Evilly curious and perpetually hungry creatures that they were ...

The grey wraiths were moving slowly through the snow, perhaps about a dozen of them, and concentrating so hard on their journey they had not yet noticed the Strike Force.

DareWing motioned one Wing after him, then very gradually began a downward spiral that would eventually bring him to the Skraelings' backs.

As he drifted lower, DareWing stifled another exclamation. A small rabbit was bounding through the snow before the Skraelings; one of its ears was missing, and its fur looked as though it was streaked with pus.

One of Qeteb's creatures, then.

The Skraelings are in league with Qeteb! And that thought did not surprise DareWing overmuch, either, for the Skraelings had ever sought someone to lead them in their perpetual quest for misery.

Well, this was one group that would never make it as far as the Maze.

Again DareWing motioned with his hand, and the Wing behind him lifted silvery bows from their back, and filled them with arrows fletched in feathers the same colour as their individual wings.

Dare Wing's hand dropped, and the arrows flew.

Most found their mark, although they did the wraiths little damage. The arrows flew straight through their grey insubstantiality, and the only wraith that dropped was one who'd turned at the sound of arrow flight and had been skewered through the eye.

"Aim for their eyes!" DareWing shouted, cursing himself that he'd not remembered this fundamental rule of the Skraeling hunt. "Aim for their eyes!"

But the hunt was harder now, for the Skraelings had dispersed, scattering over the snow and ice, blending in so

perfectly with their surroundings that the Icarii found it difficult to distinguish them.

The rabbit, however, had turned to snarl and snap at the Strike Force members now wheeling overhead, and one of the Icarii sent an arrow thudding into its side.

It toppled over, screaming thinly.

The Wing had now dispersed to deal with the Skraelings individually, and DareWing hovered above the action, shouting advice and encouragement, but mostly staying out of the way. The Icarii needed no aid to do what they'd come back to do: exact revenge and clean the wasteland of the corruption that tainted it.

Much higher, so high they were but specks in the sky, the remainder of the Strike Force hovered, waiting, and hungering for the time when they, too, could loose their arrows.

Another Skraeling fell, then another, then three more in quick succession.

DareWing permitted himself a smile of quiet satisfaction. These might only be Skraelings rather than the Demonic hordes, but they were a start, they were a start...

Something frightful suddenly, stunningly, appeared in the sky to DareWing's south.

He did not see it at first, but rather, became aware of a change in the rabbit, still noisily involved in its dying on the bloodstained snow.

It was still screaming — but in triumph, not pain.

DareWing stared, and then the looming figure to the south caught his attention.

He looked up, and his breath caught in his throat.

A gigantic serpent wriggled its way through the sky towards them. It had wings, two pitiful feathered contraptions just behind its head, but was flying more through the sinuous undulations of its body than the motion of its wings.

It was grinning.

DareWing recognised Sheol instantly. Despair radiated out from her in waves, but underlying the despair was a far more sinister power. DareWing knew she would be difficult to deal with.

He breathed deeply, calming himself, then motioned the Wing back to join the rest of the Strike Force.

He stared an instant longer, then flew after them.

Sheol grinned even harder. The pretty flying things, no doubt toys of the StarSon, were afraid.

She redoubled her efforts to reach them.

The translucent, jewel-bright creatures massed above the first of the peaks of the Icescarp Alps, an undulating cloud of colour and silvery nothingness, but Sheol ignored them, concentrating instead on their leader, a dark-visaged and winged man dressed in a ridiculous white tunic and considerably more fleshy than his command.

"Greetings, fool," said Sheol pleasantly, as she wriggled near. "You must be one of the StarSon's acquaintances."

She'd moved very close now, and her form rippled and changed until she resembled a cross between a dragonfly and a fairy.

She was exquisitely beautiful, and exquisitely threatening.

DareWing felt flames spread along his wings.

He reflexively panicked, then regained his equilibrium. He could deal with this. He imagined himself plunging into the Iskruel Ocean until the frigid waters closed above his head ...

The flames fizzled out, and DareWing soared a dozen paces further into the air.

"Very good," said the dragon-fairy. "I am impressed. Perhaps I shall just capture you for Qeteb to play with at his leisure."

Dare Wing's feathers fell out.

This time he found it harder to control his panic. He beat his de-feathered wings frantically, but without the means to caress the air they could not hold him aloft. DareWing tried to imagine new feathers sprouting along his wings, but he could not hold the image, and he fell through the air towards the ground.

DareWing closed his eyes, and prepared to embrace it. The ground would not harm him, for he did not fear it. He could exist without flight, he had already proved it...

The sound of a choir filled the air, and, distracted, Sheol let her magic waver.

Suddenly DareWing found himself soaring again, his wings whole, and he grinned. "Sheol!" he cried.

"Do you like the music?"

And he started to sing himself. It was no enchantment, and had no inherent magic, and no real meaning in its words. Its enchantment and power lay in the emotions it caused to well up in the breasts of both singers and listeners.

It was a song all Icarii sang when they celebrated a particularly blessed event — a marriage of a well-loved friend, or the birth of a child after a difficulty-fraught labour.

It was called Freedom Flight.

Feather drifting

Skyway beckoning

Freedom flight Never

ending.

Sun is burning Crest

is rising Wings are

arching Soul is

soaring.

Child seeded Hands

uniting Friendship

laughing Love

triumphant.

Feather drifting

Skyway beckoning

Freedom flight Never

ending.

Sheol's eyes widened. "Think that will hurt me?"

DareWing grinned yet more, and waved at the choir behind him, floating in the thermals rising from the black peaks below.

Their singing doubled, if not in volume, then in intensity.

Many among the Icarii were crying with the strength of their emotion — with the strength of their joy.

Sheol hissed, and wriggled back a little. "You cannot hurt me with that!"

"No?" whispered DareWing. "No? What would happen, Sheol, if I could make you sing a verse?

Hmm? Would you like to try? Now, come on. You have heard enough to know the words, surely.

Come, sing with me ... Feather drifting, Skyway beckoning..."

DareWing flew towards her with a hand outstretched. "Come ... Freedom flight, Never ending.'"

She snarled, and wriggled further away. "Think that pitiful song will destroy me?"

No, maybe not, DareWing thought, but it is a step in the right direction. And then hope did consume him, and he knew beyond any doubt that DragonStar would find the way to defeat these Demons.

"Get.you gone, Sheol," DareWing snapped, "for you are not welcome here in these wastes."

She stared, not knowing what to do, wondering if somehow this entire episode was meant to be a preamble to one of the preordained challenges, and, if so, what she should do about it. Then, fortuitously, Qeteb touched her mind.

Come back! Come back! We have a visitor.

"Fool!" Sheol shot at DareWing as a form of goodbye, then she flowed her form back into that of the winged serpent, and retreated back south.