Crusader

by Sara Douglass

  DragonStar drew back from her in complete shock. “You what? He wants what?”

  “I want him back!” StarLaughter turned to DragonStar, her face alive with passion and purpose. “As he must want me! Who else can WolfStar ever love? Who else can I? We have made our mistakes, true, but—”

  DragonStar laughed hollowly. “You’re mad, StarLaughter. Mad! WolfStar will never—”

  “Yes! Yes! He must!”

  “Wait…have you told StarGrace this?”

  “No. She would not understand. All she wants is his death.”

  “And the other Hawkchilds? They want the same?”

  StarLaughter nodded.

  “So let me see if I understand this completely,” DragonStar said. “You have decided that, against all odds and expectations, your purpose in life is to love WolfStar again—”

  “And he me!” she said. “We were born for each other, and we have spent the past several thousand years moving back towards each other!”

  Gods, DragonStar thought. The woman is completely insane!

  “Let me finish,” he said. “You have decided you want to find WolfStar to throw yourself into his arms, while you have managed to convince the Hawkchilds that you remain committed to his death.”

  “They would accept no other arguments,” StarLaughter said.

  “True,” DragonStar said, “but what will happen if the Hawkchilds realise that you are double-crossing them? Or if you get away with that, what will you do when you all happen on WolfStar? You want to love him, the Hawkchilds want to kill him. It’s bound to be a mess, StarLaughter.”

  “Leave that to me,” she said. “All that need concern you is that I and the Hawkchilds work on your behalf—”

  “Until the Hawkchilds realise you’re tricking them,” DragonStar said a little dryly.

  “And who will tell them, DragonStar? Who?” She sighed. “You do not need to concern yourself about me, or the Hawkchilds, or even WolfStar. Help us to find him, and then turn your back. You get what you want, and I will get what I want.”

  And the Hawkchilds, thought DragonStar? What do you plan to do when everyone finally meets up with WolfStar?

  She pressed herself against him, burying her fists in the folds of his shirt, her face upturned to his, her eyes blazing. “WolfStar and I—what a team! We can best the Hawkchilds, and then…then…”

  StarLaughter lapsed into silence, her mouth open, her eyes moist with emotion.

  DragonStar stared into her face, and with a sudden shock realised that she was either completely mad, or absolutely, frighteningly sane.

  And DragonStar did not know which he feared more.

  “StarLaughter,” he finally said. “I need something solid to convince me that I can trust you. For all I know, you are still in league with the Demons.”

  “What would convince you of my genuineness? The secret to the Demons’ destruction?”

  “That would help.”

  She sighed. “I thought you already knew that.”

  “You thought wrong.”

  She thought a moment before she spoke. “If there is one thing I have learned about the Demons during my sojourn with them—and Qeteb behaves as do the others—it is that they are one-dimensional only.”

  “One-dimensional?”

  StarLaughter gave a small smile. “They are boring. Predictable. They are pure evil, true, but that is all they are. Completely one-dimensional. DragonStar, if you want to defeat them, then make them two-dimensional.”

  “I have no idea what you mean—”

  She turned her face fully to his. “Give them a choice, DragonStar, and they will fall apart. Perhaps.”

  He was silent, thinking. Was this the weapon his witches could use against the Demons?

  “Give them a fork in their straight and narrow roads, DragonStar, and you may be able to confuse them enough to choose the path leading to their doom rather than yours.”

  Chapter 32

  Revival

  The Demons were angry beyond any anger that had ever filled them in previous millennia. And of all five, Qeteb was angry beyond compare.

  Fury consumed him.

  Rage ate his entire soul.

  Revenge, destruction, the blight and devastation of all that still somehow survived: these were his only thoughts.

  Now!

  “They escaped me!” he bellowed across the land.

  Well, so what if they had? They could escape nowhere he would not eventually find them.

  If they were in Sanctuary? Then he would consume Sanctuary! He would shred it! Ravage it! Vomit forth its remains into the interstellar wastes to float lonely for eternity!

  If they hid somewhere in a secret cave or dungeon?

  Then it would not survive his might and power. What devastation he had wreaked on Tencendor to this point was but a foretaste of what he would eventually do.

  Qeteb smiled. What he would eventually do with the power of the Enemy. He would turn the Enemy’s own power back on them and laugh as they screamed.

  Qeteb had never been this powerful in his entire existence, nor ever this potentially powerful. He could feel the power he’d eaten in the Sacred Groves ripple through him, making him stronger, more magical…more dangerous.

  And soon he would revel in the power of the Enemy.

  And after that, after that lay Sanctuary.

  Qeteb’s stomach gurgled with anticipation. So many souls, all waiting for him. Fattening themselves on the false hope of Sanctuary. He laughed.

  And after Sanctuary, the entire planet.

  And then Qeteb knew he could ravage at will through the universe. The Star Dance would quail and then fail.

  “There is nothing that can stop me now,” he whispered, and the whisper fled through the clouds and the thin air of the upper atmosphere and fled screaming through the universe.

  There is nothing that can stop me now!

  They had returned to the scene of Rox’s death. Sigholt. Sheol, Raspu, Mot and Barzula stood in a semicircle before the moat where the bridge had once stood. As one they were silent, concentrating, pooling all their power and directing it where Qeteb wanted it.

  Before them, supine and willing, lay the Niah-woman. Her arms were by her side, her eyes staring sightlessly into the low and heavy sky.

  Her belly, still flat, nevertheless quivered and throbbed with the burgeoning life within.

  Qeteb was leaping and screaming atop Sigholt’s Keep, a black, maniacal figure, all spindly arms and legs and grinning face full of teeth.

  Qeteb was calling Rox’s spirit home.

  Evil never died, and was never destroyed. It only festered, and Rox’s spirit had been festering ever since the bridge’s trap had killed him.

  Lost, lonely, angry, revengeful, it had drifted among the stars where the bridge had flung it.

  Now its master was calling it, singing to it (screaming through a bloody, foaming mouth to it), and Rox’s spirit responded.

  It crashed through the universe, wailing past galaxies, tearing apart planetary systems, destroying moons and asteroids alike.

  Qeteb became a blur of mania atop Sigholt. He flung his arms and legs about with such violence his joints creaked and popped; his voice screeched and wailed through his throat; his teeth waxed and waned in his jaws—now long, razored fangs, now rickety, decayed grinders; his body parts grew to tremendous size and then exploded, reforming in the same instant into grotesque parodies of anatomy that wriggled and reached as if they had a life of their own.

  The surface of Tencendor heaved and shuddered. Boils opened and exploded dirt and filth into the air. Chasms writhed across the plains, meeting and breeding and reproducing until the sound of their passing became a nightmarish roar.

  Mountains jiggled and jumped, oceans wailed, caverns sobbed.

  Qeteb laughed.

  Deep in the bowels of Star Finger DragonStar put his hands to his ears and screamed. Every horror that Qeteb visited on the land was visited on his soul.
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  “DragonStar!” Leagh yelled, and threw herself against him. “DragonStar!” And she grabbed at one of his hands, and held it tightly against her belly. “Believe!”

  DragonStar’s eyes widened, and he fell silent.

  Rox exploded through the sky as the craft of the Enemy had once done.

  Fire rained down, and ice sheets shattered the air.

  Qeteb screamed in triumph, every part of him wriggling and writhing.

  He was a master!

  Blood showered down from the sky, and the four other Demons tipped back their heads and let it wash over their faces.

  They were very, very happy.

  Something black and horrible slowly spiralled down from the heavens.

  It was a worm, wriggling and writhing in complete harmony with Qeteb, slick and moist, covered in the oils and juices of its reincarnation.

  Rox’s homecoming soul.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Qeteb screamed, stabbing one finger down towards Niah’s still supine body. “There! In her womb! There!”

  And the worm saw, and rejoiced.

  It spiralled closer, slowly, slowly, slowly, and then suddenly it became a blur of movement, dropping (squelching) down to the ground before Niah, humping and wriggling, making frantic mewling sounds, desperate…

  “Yes! Yes! There! There!”

  And the worm saw, and went. It wriggled up to Niah’s feet, and forced them apart.

  It began the final journey up the valley of her legs, moving to its sweet haven between her thighs…

  Qeteb roared with laughter. “This is what I will do to you, DragonStar!”

  And the worm wriggled home, and disappeared.

  Niah’s belly roiled.

  And DragonStar screamed, and retched, and Leagh pressed his hand even harder against her belly, and said, “Use me, DragonStar, use the flowers.”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stared at her, and then felt what throbbed forth from her belly.

  Life. Wonder reborn.

  And DragonStar used it.

  Niah’s body convulsed, once, twice, a third time, and then it lay still. One of its hands twitched.

  Qeteb flung himself into the air, tumbling down from Sigholt’s tower like a deranged acrobat determined upon his own destruction.

  He landed next to Niah, a jerking, black thing all arms and legs and grinning face, and he grabbed at her arm. “Wake up! Wake up!”

  And Niah did.

  She turned her exquisitely beautiful face to Qeteb and she smiled with a frightful malevolence.

  Niah’s body, controlled from within her womb by Rox’s soul.

  “This feels good,” the Rox-Niah said, and it spoke with the voice of Rox, harsh from disuse and the fright and loneliness of his death. It raised itself up on an arm, and waggled its tongue experimentally. “Two bodies to control.”

  “The outer will be disposed of when you grow enough to wriggle your way free again,” Qeteb said. His form flowed and reshaped itself into the handsome man clad in grey and ivory. “Now, how do you feel?”

  The Rox-Niah—Roxiah—sat up and furrowed its brow thoughtfully. “Strange. Odd…as if…”

  “As if you have access, perhaps, to a new and strange power?” Qeteb asked eagerly.

  “Yes…yes, that’s it. It feels,” Roxiah twisted its features into an expression of hate and loathing, “familiar.”

  “Indeed, my sweet,” Qeteb said, “for ’tis the power of the Enemy.”

  And Roxiah opened its mouth and roared, and all beasts left in Tencendor quavered and wailed.

  Except those surrounding DragonStar.

  Lifting his hand from Leagh’s belly, calm and assured now, he stared into the ceiling of the basement chamber, as if he could see right through it to the sky above.

  “Why not come and get us, Qeteb,” he said, and grinned. “If you can find us!”

  Qeteb screamed, and lurched to his feet. Roxiah rose as well, and the Demons, now a complete circle of six, capered and reeled about.

  Why not come and get us, Qeteb. If you can find us!

  “Fool! Fool!” Qeteb screeched. “I have better things to do before I come to eat you!”

  DragonStar smiled, and kissed Leagh gently on her forehead.

  “Good,” he said. “It will be the sweeter for the waiting.”

  Chapter 33

  Urbeth’s Plan

  “The Skraelings?” Axis said. “What do you mean, ‘the Skraelings’?”

  Urbeth stood up, and suddenly she was an icebear no longer, but the tall woman of grey and silvered hair.

  A circle of stars blazed from her left hand.

  “The Enchantress,” Azhure said, and dipped her head in reverence.

  “Ah,” Urbeth said, “no time for such polite niceties now. We have work to do.” She walked over to the balustrade and looked at the scene before her. “Pretty, but ultimately destroyable. I can’t think what the Enemy were thinking of.”

  “They were thinking,” Axis said, “of a means to give us a respite.”

  “Mayhap so,” Urbeth said, and turned back to face him. “But what now?”

  “Well…”

  “Ha! Haven’t an idea, have you?”

  Axis grinned, and folded his arms nonchalantly. “No. But I think that you do.”

  Urbeth waved a hand. “I have grown used to the fact that I must, apparently, save the day whenever everyone else gets themselves into a hopeless muddle. So, review the situation for me. You!”

  She pointed at Zared. “What does this Sanctuary contain?”

  Zared stared at Axis, and then looked back to Urbeth. “Ah…”

  “Speak up, dammit! For all we know Qeteb might be chewing his way down through that make-believe sky right now!”

  “Sanctuary contains all the Tencendorian peoples that were left sane after the Demons’ initial push through into the land, and before Qeteb’s final resurrection. All its peoples, and all its animals.”

  One of Urbeth’s daughters—they had also assumed human form—moved forward to stand before Zared. “And by all its animals you mean…?”

  Zared lifted his hands, not quite knowing how to explain. “Everything that DragonStar’s witches—”

  “DragonStar’s witches?” Urbeth asked sharply.

  “His ‘helpers’, I suppose you could call them,” Axis said. “Those who share the same source of power that he does. Acharite power—the power of the Enemy.”

  Urbeth smiled. “Ah. Good.”

  “Faraday and Leagh,” Azhure put in, moving to stand and link arms with Axis, “DareWing, the Strike Leader, and Goldman the Master of the Guilds of Carlon. Lastly, there is Gwendylyr, Duchess of Aldeni.”

  “An eclectic bunch!” Urbeth said. “But I suppose DragonStar knew what he was doing. But you were saying, Zared, everything that DragonStar’s witches…?”

  “Could pull into Tencendor before Qeteb’s final resurrection,” Zared said. “Deer, sheep, bloated creatures from Bogle Marsh—”

  “Which Sanctuary has most genially recreated for them,” FreeFall put in under his breath. All this discussion was making him impatient.

  “Insects, birds…everything,” Zared finished.

  Urbeth shared a glance with her two daughters. What a clutter! And they were going to have to fix it!

  She turned back to Axis. “And so you were…what was it…looking for a back door?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what, pray tell,” Urbeth said softly, walking up so close to Axis her face was only a handspan from his, “were you going to do then?”

  He held her grey gaze, although it was not the easiest thing he’d had to do in his life.

  “I don’t know.”

  Urbeth returned his stare, then gave a soft laugh. “You ‘don’t know’. You were going to lead this entire zoo out this ‘back door’…to what? Instant madness at the hands of the Demons? Were you going to lead them back into a wasted Tencendor, Axis? What in stars names were you going t
o do?”

  “I was going to judge that circumstance when I encountered it!” Axis shouted.

  Urbeth did not flinch.

  “I suppose you have a better idea?” said Axis, no less hostile.

  “Of course,” she said, and smiled.

  Axis was not to be placated by a smile. “Well?” he snapped.

  “Behold,” Urbeth said, and, turning to one side, she waved a hand through the air.

  Instantly, the garish turquoise tiling of the balcony floor rose up in ridges and dips.

  Everyone, save Urbeth, her daughters, and Ur, who still sat quietly, her arms about her pot, gasped in astonishment. Urbeth had created a relief map of Tencendor.

  Urbeth moved so she could point out individual features. “Qeteb has wasted all this portion,” she said, and with a sweep of her hand indicated the bulk of Tencendor. “Coroleas still lies safe, although it, too, will be consumed if Qeteb manages to best DragonStar. The Demons’ influence extends some way out over both the Andeis and the Widowmaker Seas, perhaps a league’s distance. The Corolean fishing industry has been badly affected, and the Emperor is not pleased.”

  Axis grunted. The diplomatic disasters of the situation did not concern him. “What else remains clear?”

  Urbeth hesitated, glancing at her daughters. “The icefloes of the Iskruel Ocean are still navigable, although growing more unsound by the hour.”

  “If Coroleas is still free,” Azhure said, “can we go there? Can you get us out of here, Urbeth? Into Coroleas?”

  Urbeth did not answer immediately. “Coroleas is a possible destination, although not entirely desirable. The Emperor will be entirely displeased at the sudden influx of guests, two-, four- and eight-legged.”

  “He’ll just have to put up with—” Axis began.

  “But there is a better place for us to go,” Urbeth said. “Here,” and her finger moved. “The tundra to the extreme north-east of Tencendor.”

  “What!” Axis exploded. “But that’s frozen! How can we survive there? And that territory is full of…” he trailed off, remembering what Urbeth had earlier said about the Skraelings.