Crusader

by Sara Douglass

  The cave itself was roomy and dry since the spring had dried up in the aftermath of Qeteb’s resurrection, but the opening to the cave had been built up with masonry to allow only a relatively narrow opening for the water to gush through. Gwendylyr supposed Sigholt’s engineers, in doing so, had thought to protect the spring from contamination by loose vegetation and wild animals. Whatever, it took only the work of a half an hour for Gwendylyr to further fortify the entrance with the branches of trees blown down in Qeteb’s fit of ressurective destruction.

  Then she had sunk to the floor of the cave and dozed for some hours.

  When she’d awoken, it was to find that night had fully enveloped the landscape, and there were horrid whisperings and scratchings at her dry-branched doorway.

  And so Gwendylyr had sighed, risen, brushed herself off, tucked away a few tendrils of stray hair, and prepared to defend herself.

  There were loose rocks lying everywhere, and once she’d managed to drive the first ranks back a cautious twenty or thirty paces with her well-aimed missiles, Gwendylyr set to piling up an armoury.

  The only trouble was, the rocks were not replenishable. She could probably keep the gathering hordes at bay for a few hours (but what if they all rushed her at once?), but come morning, she would undoubtedly be out of ammunition.

  Gwendylyr stood thinking, hands on hips, her eyes drifting from her neat piles of rocks to the entrance and back again.

  “The trouble with me,” she said, “is that I am far too neat and way too organised.”

  She moved closer to the entrance and peered over her barrier of tree branches. There were several hundred, possibly several thousand, creatures out there now, huddled in the darkness, and slowly, slowly creeping their way forward.

  Gwendylyr threw a rock.

  It struck a creeping dog squarely in the forehead. He yelped and cowered, then recovered and crept forward again, even though his forehead had caved in and thick sludgy matter—Gwendylyr presumed it was the dog’s brains but couldn’t see clearly at this distance and in this dark—was sliding down the right-hand side of the dog’s face.

  Gwendylyr shrugged. The rocks were losing their potency. Neatness and organisation would not win the day for her.

  She smiled, and stood very still.

  She closed her eyes and lowered her head, concentrating.

  Gwendylyr was thinking very unneat thoughts. She was, in fact, reliving her recently-found friendship with the forces of disorder.

  And then, just as the first of the creatures had reached her barrier and had seized the branches in order to tear them away, Gwendylyr let all the forces of disordered nature fly forth. The creatures did not know what had gone wrong. They had been creeping through a world that they knew and loved: a world of bleakness and madness, a world of devastation, a world that belonged truly to their masters and no-one else.

  And then, everything had fallen apart. The ground had shifted, split, reformed—but reformed into geological features that had not been there previously. Stone pillars thrust upwards where once had been flat ground, caverns yawned where once had been solid rock.

  And over all crept entwining ivy, tangling paws and claws and limbs, pulling creatures into pits and under toppling rocks.

  None of the creatures could find a toehold, for in this disordered world toeholds did not exist. They tumbled and shrieked, tearing each other apart in the effort to find a foothold anywhere, and all the time ripping and snapping at the ivy that rioted everywhere.

  This was not a world they understood.

  Gwendylyr smiled.

  When the three Wing of the Strike Force DragonStar had sent arrived, they found nothing but Gwendylyr sitting in front of her cave, lighting a small fire with the remains of what appeared to have once been a stack of firewood.

  Everything seemed calm and perfectly normal.

  “Have you been troubled by any of Qeteb’s creatures?” asked the Flight Leader who settled before her.

  “Hardly at all,” Gwendylyr replied.

  DragonStar smiled, and turned his attention south towards Cauldron Lake.

  Here, surprisingly, for they’d had the furthest to fly, the three Wing of the Strike Force had arrived before the dark column from the Maze…

  The more surprising, for the creatures sent to Cauldron Lake had less distance to travel than those who troubled Leagh and Gwendylyr.

  But then again, the crystal forest was still standing, and mayhap it still exerted some degree of fear in the minds of the creatures, enough to make them drag their malformed feet more than they would have done.

  Perhaps it was the memories floating about the Keep, perhaps something else, but DareWing and Goldman had, in the few short hours they’d been there, formed a partnership very much like that of Ogden and Veremund.

  The Wing of the Strike Force arrived to find the two fighting over who exactly had washed the dishes resulting from their meal.

  “You must have done it,” DareWing was saying, “for I did not!”

  “You undoubtedly did,” Goldman said crossly, “for I know that I did not, and who else is there?”

  “Ahem,” said KirtleBreeze, leader of the three Wing, but nevertheless shifting from foot to foot in embarrassment.

  DareWing and Goldman looked up at the birdman standing in the doorway of the Keep, annoyance etched into each of their faces.

  “What are you doing here?” DareWing said. “I thought that—”

  “DragonStar sent us to aid you,” KirtleBreeze said.

  “Aid us?” Goldman said. “We need no aid!”

  KirtleBreeze shot a look behind him. “If I might suggest—” he began, then got no further, for the sounds of battle interrupted him.

  KirtleBreeze stepped back into the night and disappeared, and Goldman and DareWing rushed forward, colliding in the doorway and scrabbling at each other before finally managing to get through.

  The Keep was surrounded by thousands of demonic creatures, humanoid and animal.

  Most of them were writhing on the ground with arrows to their eyes and throats.

  “Not bad,” DareWing said, and nodded as he folded his arms and stood back to survey the slaughter.

  “They could have let us do something,” Goldman said, and DareWing turned his face to his companion and grinned.

  “The next battle will be ours, my friend.”

  “Aye, so it will be. So it will be,” and Goldman’s hand drifted down to stroke the crest of the lizard at his side.

  Faraday barely coped with the creatures sent to harry her.

  Their instructions were not to attack and destroy, but to whisper.

  And Qeteb had instructed them well.

  As Faraday had backed into her pile of rubble, hundreds of blackened, grinning creatures had completely surrounded the pile of stones.

  They settled down on bellies and haunches, some with heads resting on paws, and they grinned and gleamed their reddened eyes at her.

  “Qeteb won’t be long,” they said, a horrible chorus of voices rising and whispering into the night. “He won’t be long at all.”

  “And he can’t wait to get his hands on you,” a cat said to one side, and the entire mass of creatures tittered.

  “He’ll make a real woman of you,” an old crone murmured, and ran her hands lovingly over and under her own sagging dugs. She raised crazed eyes to Faraday. “He’s done wonders with Niah.”

  “He’ll take you within the Maze,” said a bull. “He’ll make you a queen. Remember Gorgrael? Remember what he did to you?”

  The bull leered, foam dripping from his slavering mouth. “Qeteb will be a real bull for you, m’dear. In every way.”

  “You speak lies and illusions,” Faraday said, keeping her voice calm although she was appalled by what they said. How much did they know? How much did Qeteb know?

  “Everything,” an adolescent boy said. “Isfrael told him, y’see. Isfrael told him how best to use his mother, for the only reason his mother exists i
s to make a useful sacrifice.”

  “Will DragonStar save you, do you think?” asked the old crone. Her fingers were now dug so deep into her flaccid breasts that flesh oozed up between them. “Or will he offer your throat for Tencendor?”

  “He will save me,” Faraday said.

  The mass of creatures howled with laughter.

  “We can hear the fear in your voice,” a small reptile finally managed to say through its chortles, “and we know the reason for your fear. You are not sure, are you!”

  “I am sure of one thing,” Faraday said, finally, utterly, unbearably angry, “and that is of—”

  The bull did not allow her to answer. “You have a choice,” he said. “You can succumb and the pain will end…reasonably fast. Or you can fight and tear yourself apart in the effort to free yourself. Which will it be?”

  Faraday’s mind jerked back to the test she’d undergone when she and DragonStar’s other witches had sat under the crystal-columned dome in Sanctuary. Then she had answered…then she had answered…

  Gods, then she had answered that the thorns should choose for her!

  But she could not give that answer here, for it would warn Qeteb of the methods that she and her companions meant to use against the Demons.

  “I will succumb,” Faraday said softly, her soul screaming with every word, “for that is what I have always done.”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” screamed the horde, and they surged forward.

  Faraday could do nothing to stop them, for she was overcome with despair and sorrow. Yes, she would succumb, for isn’t that what she always did? Isn’t that what fate demanded of her again? Isn’t that what—

  She lost consciousness.

  Atop the rubble of Star Finger, DragonStar lowered his head and wept for her courage and for her despair.

  “Now,” he whispered, “please gods in heaven, now!”

  When Faraday opened her eyes again, it was to the concerned gaze of a Wing Leader.

  “My Lady Faraday,” he said. “The beasts are either dead or driven back. You are safe.”

  “I am never safe,” she said, and turned her head aside.

  Chapter 40

  Night: II

  “Skraelings!” Zared whispered, and reached for his sword. He had never fought against them himself, for the battle for Tencendor was won by the time he slipped from Rivkah’s womb, but his father, Magariz, had told him over many years of companionship-filled nights about his battles with the wraiths, and Zared had every reason to fear. The Skraelings fed off terror as much as they did flesh.

  Another whisper reached out from the night. A soft hiccup, and then yet more whispers moaning along the back of the wind, knifing along the crystalline edge of every snowflake.

  “They’re everywhere!” Azhure said, and lifted Katie into the cart. “Dammit! I wish I had a bow, a sword, or even a cursed stick!”

  “We can find you—” Axis began, but Ur waved a hand about and silenced him.

  “We need no swords against such as these that wait outside,” she said.

  “There are thousands of them!” Axis cried. “I can feel it!”

  Sal pranced nervously about, laying her ears flat against her skull, and Axis had to exert all his skill to keep her from

  bolting into the night. Sparrow-gift or not, at the moment she was behaving like any young, nervous horse.

  But Sal was the least of Axis’ concerns. Gods! How would he protect the millions of people and creatures in this convoy? The strength of their fear alone would strengthen the Skraelings to the point where no-one could defeat them!

  “Forty-two thousand of them, to be exact,” Ur said. “Precisely what we need.”

  “What!”

  Ur sighed, and hugged her pot closer. “You have no imagination,” she said. “You think to fight with swords when a little hospitality would work miracles.”

  Zared, Axis and Azhure, who had now climbed back into the cart, stared at her.

  “Hospitality?” Axis finally said. “You think we should invite them in for dinner?”

  “Yes,” Ur said. “Or, at least, a friendly drink.”

  Zared grabbed at Axis’ arm. “The wine, and the bowls, that Urbeth insisted we bring with us!”

  Axis stared at Zared, and then back to Ur. “We get them drunk?”

  Ur grinned. “Skraelings have ever had a poor head for alcohol,” she said, “but they cannot resist it.”

  I spent years fighting the wraiths with sword and blood, Axis thought, when I could simply have got them drunk instead?

  “Lessons are never too late for the learning,” Ur said. “Now, best find those wine barrels. The night, the storm and the Skraelings are closing in, and if we can’t deal with the Skraelings, then none of us will survive until dawn.”

  The Demons swarmed down tunnel after tunnel, encountering little but tangled tree roots and the dank, musky odour of the long-abandoned warren.

  Occasionally, they found a scrap of white fur hanging off a sharp piece of stone, or caught in a tree root, and those small white pieces of hope drove them further and further, and deeper and deeper.

  And, as they sped deeper, the walls of the rabbit warren began to change.

  Axis sent orders shouting back down the length of the column until the shouts were lost in the night and the thick blanket of the snow-filled storm.

  He hoped people had enough warmth left in their fingers to get the bowls out and filled.

  Axis kneed Sal close into the side of the cart, and took the blanket Azhure held up for him, spreading it over the horse’s back and hindquarters. Sal had been shivering so badly that Axis thought she would throw him off with the strength of her tremors.

  He slid from her back—the mare was so cold she was of little use—and grabbed at the three bowls that a man handed him.

  “Where’s the wine?” he said, the freezing air burning in his throat.

  “Next cart down,” the man said, and Axis noticed that he had icicles hanging off his beard.

  Tucking the bowls under one arm, he felt his own face.

  It was crusted with ice.

  “Let me give you a hand.” Zared, stumbling close by him.

  Axis nodded, and handed him the bowls, taking more as they were passed out. If this didn’t work—and he couldn’t see how getting the Skraelings drunk would aid them against the creeping death of the ice-storm—they would not see out the hour, let alone the night.

  The Demons were so intent on catching the rabbits—all thought of chasing the people fleeing Sanctuary completely forgotten—that at first they did not notice the changes occurring about them.

  But then the ferret that was Raspu slipped suddenly, unexpectedly, and careened into Sheol.

  She turned around and gave him a sharp bite on his shoulder, and then her eyes widened.

  They were running through a tunnel of earth no more, but a tunnel carved through ice.

  And through the ice, tens of thousands of eyes staring at them.

  Sheol squeaked, half in annoyance, half in fear, and Qeteb turned and stared.

  Axis stood, shaking with cold, as a man standing in the cart above him poured out a measure of wine.

  The man’s exposed hands were blue, and they trembled so badly the barrel jerked and wine spilt all down the front of Axis’ tunic.

  “No matter, man,” Axis said, “I have enough.” And he stepped aside so Zared could have his bowl filled as well.

  All about them were lines of men, bowls of wine in hand, stumbling out into the storm to lay the bowls in the snow a good ten paces from the carts.

  Everyone else, people and creatures alike, were huddled as best they could under blankets or carts or, if small enough, under the clothes of people.

  The only ones who appeared comfortable in the prevailing conditions were the Ravensbundmen and women, who laughed and jested as they did more than their fair share of filling bowls with wine and then placing them in the snow.

  Gradually, as men and wome
n stumbled back and forth in the snowy night, hundreds of wine-filled bowls were laid out down the length of both sides of the column.

  As Axis struggled back to where Azhure, Katie and Ur waited, Zared a pace behind him, Ur grinned, and placed her terracotta pot on the ground before her.

  “Not long to wait now,” she said.

  Qeteb twisted about. They were trapped in a length of ice tunnel. What magic had brought them here? How had he been trapped? No matter, he could find his way out of here without even the ghost of an effort.

  Chitter, chatter. Chitter, chatter.

  Qeteb spun about again. Who was that? Behind and about him the other Demons snarled.

  Chitter, chatter. Who have we here, chitter, chatter?

  “Who are you?” Qeteb snarled. He did not like the feel of these beings, these eyes that stared down at him through the thick layers of ice, for they had the feel of…the feel of free souls.

  We are the Chitter Chatters, strange guest. Who are you?

  “I am Qeteb, the Midday Demon, and Lord of this land!”

  A strange, whispering laughter filtered through the ice. We have no lord, and we have no land. Only this ice-bound, drifting world. A cruel world. Do you like our cruel world, strange guest?

  Qeteb snarled, and struck at the ice roof above his head.

  It did not even crack, and he sank back to all four paws, alternatively growling and mewling.

  We do not know you, chitter, chatter. But we do not think we like you.

  The Demons squirmed about in their confined space, probing for cracks and possible escape. Mot, then Barzula and Sheol, growled.

  “I have had enough!” Qeteb snarled, and struck out with his power.

  Nothing happened. There was a sense of withdrawal from the Chitter Chatters, and then a probing into the Demons’ minds again as they came back.