Crusader (17 page)

She shook her head violently.

“I ask also that Axis and Azhure supervise his care,” DragonStar said.

The birdwoman nodded soberly and rose back in the air. DragonStar waited impatiently—refusing to respond to any of WolfStar’s taunts or answer any of his questions—until he could see Axis and a group of four or five men draw near with a stretcher. He nodded to the group and smiled to his father, then he stepped back into Spiredore without further ado, the Song Book still in his grasp.

DragonStar had someone he needed to talk to.

Someone who could confirm what DragonStar had finally realised was probably the true purpose of the Enchanted Song Book.

The bridge at Sigholt was in mourning. Her sister was gone—a necessary precaution—but the bridge still missed her.

She was immensely grateful when she felt DragonStar’s feet upon her back.

“StarSon! You have come home!”

“Only briefly, bridge. I admit myself glad you still stand.”

“I can resist the Demons a while longer, StarSon.”

He nodded, looking about. Sigholt was still standing, but it looked wan, as if its life was draining away.

“None of us will last for much longer,” the bridge said, sadly.

DragonStar’s attention re-sharpened on the bridge. “None of you? What about Spiredore?”

“She also will die,” the bridge said. “The Enemy’s heritage has passed into you, StarSon, and none of us have much purpose left.”

Spiredore would die? But what would that mean? He’d be trapped either in Sanctuary, or in the wasteland.

And either would be fatal, both to him and to his witches, and, eventually, to Tencendor.

“Do you feel strong enough for a last request, bridge?”

“A conversation?” she said hopefully.

DragonStar smiled, but it was sad. “Yes…but not with you, bridge. I would like to speak to the trap you harbour within you.”

“That effort will kill me,” she said, and DragonStar felt tears spring to his eyes.

“I know,” he said.

The bridge hesitated. “I will do it for you. StarSon?”

“Yes?”

“Win for us.”

“I will,” he whispered. “Bridge…bridge, know that you go with the love of many.”

She did not speak, but he could feel her emotion shuddering through her, and he stepped onto the roadway that led into HoldHard Pass.

“Goodbye,” she said…and transformed.

Not into her arachnoid form, but into the shape of an archway constructed of pale, unmortared blocks of stone.

Goodbye bridge…

The archway formed over the moat between the road and Sigholt, its lip touching the ground several paces away from DragonStar.

A man walked out of the arch.

He was white-haired and emaciated, and his entire form trembled as he walked. His face was deeply lined, his eyes faded and tired.

“Who are you?” he said, stopping a pace before DragonStar.

“My name is DragonStar SunSoar,” he said, “and I am the result of your mistakes.”

The old man cackled with laughter. “DragonStar? What kind of a name is
that
?”

He peered about him. “Where are we? Topside again?”

DragonStar wondered if the old man still thought he was on his home world. “What is your name?”

“Me? Oh, my name is Fischer. Where
am
I?”

DragonStar stared at him. He’d talked to the bridge about the moment when this man—a vastly younger version, apparently—had appeared and taunted Rox and the other Demons. Then the man had been full of confidence and knowledge. Now?

Ah, but that man was only a phantasm of the trap. The bridge had sent him the original. No wonder the effort had killed her.

“You are in the remains of a land called Tencendor,” DragonStar said, “where the craft from your world crashed tens of thousands of years ago.”

Fischer looked sharply at him. “Ah, and the Demons have followed?”

“Look about you.”

“Aye,” Fischer said, and grimaced. “Aye, they followed. Have you summoned me to blame me?”

“No. I need to ask you a question.”

“Ah! I’d rather that you blamed me! I am sick of questions…what to do? When to do it? How? How? How? It took us forty years of questions before we came anywhere close to a single answer, and even then we only patched up the problem, we did not solve it. What is your question?”

“You reflected the Demon’s hatred back at him, thus trapping him.”

“Yes. Is that your question?”

“No. It trapped him, and it dismembered him, but it did not kill him. Why not?”

Fischer looked at the man carefully. He was pretty enough, and had a strange charismatic appeal, but Fischer did not know if he would be strong enough to do what was necessary. If he was merely
told
, then he would never get the strength. If he discovered it for himself, then he just might have a hope.

“I cannot answer the question,” Fischer said, “but I have a piece of advice. Evil cannot be destroyed, it merely festers.”

“Why can’t you answer the question?”

“I cannot teach you what is right or wrong. In this battle the answers must come from your spirit. You must learn what will work against the Demons.” Fischer looked at him steadily. “You must learn from our mistakes.”

DragonStar stared, and then relaxed. “Thank you, Fischer.”

Fischer grinned, and nodded his head. “My pleasure, m’boy. Finish it for us, I beg you. Our world was destroyed. I hope yours will be reborn.”

DragonStar started to say something, but jerked in surprise as a stone fell from the archway and thudded into the ground behind Fischer.

Fischer likewise jumped, then scurried back under the arch as another, and then another, stone fell.

“Finish it this time,” he whispered, and then the entire arch caved in, and the last DragonStar saw of Fischer was the man’s arms raised in a hopeless attempt to protect himself against the falling masonry.

There was a rumble, and the archway collapsed into the moat.

Finish it for us.

DragonStar stood there a long time, staring into the moat and the pile of rubble he could dimly see in its depths.

Then he pulled the Song Book out from under his arm and leafed slowly through it.

The Enchanted Song Book did not tell him how to destroy the Demons at all. It was literally a list of the Enemy’s previous mistakes.

What the Enchanted Song Book told him was what
not
to do.

DragonStar hesitated, then, with a quick twist of his wrist, tossed the Song Book into the moat.

It flared briefly as it fell, its pages rippling and cracking in the wind of its passing, then it vanished.

DragonStar smiled sadly, then let it fade. He did not have much time, and he had much strength to gain before he could put this knowledge to use.

I
sfrael was impatient to make his deal with the Demons. Then he would escape with the Avar to the Sacred Groves, and leave the Acharites and Icarii to their fate.

But he had one small problem. Getting out of Sanctuary.

DragonStar could do it, wielding Enemy Acharite magic to do so, but Isfrael could not. This place was crafted of Enemy enchantment, and only those of Acharite blood—
and
who had reawoken into their powers—could use it. Isfrael had Acharite blood aplenty from his parents, Axis and Faraday, but he’d not been through the process of death that was needed to be able to make use of the power, and Isfrael had no intention of dying for his ambitions.

No, there had to be
some
other way to get out.

He sat under a great spreading whalebone tree in the heart of the forest that Sanctuary had created in order to make the Avar feel at home. Isfrael did not appreciate Sanctuary’s efforts at all. The entire forest seemed false: it did not sing, and it did not vibrate with power.

And the Avar watched him out of the corner of their eyes…almost as if they were keeping an eye on him, by the Horned Ones, rather than waiting for his will!

Although the Avar people tolerated Isfrael among them, the Avar Banes avoided him completely, and that made Isfrael more furious than anything else. He knew the Banes talked with Faraday, although they took pains to do so in private.

The Banes—perhaps all Avar—are keeping secrets from me, thought Isfrael, and the wild blond curls on his forehead tightened into even crisper, angrier knots, and his horns twinkled, as if they sharpened themselves on his thoughts.

His fingers dug into the soft earth at his side.

How could he get out of here?

Isfrael remembered how DragonStar drew the doorway of light to move to and from Sanctuary—through Spiredore, Isfrael thought—and he lusted for a doorway for himself.

He almost laughed. DragonStar was hardly likely to give him the doorway, was he? And Isfrael did not like his chances of trying to wrest it off the man: he’d likely set his pet lizard (another of Minstrelsea’s creatures that had betrayed Isfrael) or one of his hounds to his destruction.

There
had
to be some other way.

And then Isfrael stilled as memory came to his aid.

Faraday had used the doorway to evacuate the Avar from the forests into Sanctuary!

The same doorway, or a different one?

Isfrael could hardly breathe for excitement. DragonStar and his “witches” (Isfrael would have laughed had he not been so preoccupied) had had only a relatively few days to evacuate all of Tencendor. If Faraday had been given a doorway with which to work, then had the others?

Probably…probably…

And of the others, Leagh was the most trusting…and the most vulnerable.

Isfrael smiled.

Zared laughed at something Theod had just said, but there was a hard edge to his merriment. Here he sat with Theod and Herme in this marbled palace in Sanctuary, drinking the finest of wines and nibbling on the most delectable of fruits, and yet above their heads Tencendor lay wasted with horror.

And Leagh, as also Gwendylyr, were going to have to go out there and do personal battle with the Demons in order to retrieve it.

Zared did not like it at all, and neither did Theod. Herme hardly said a word, feeling both guilty and relieved that his wife didn’t have to face a Demon.

The three men sat with Leagh and Gwendylyr in a square chamber that opened out onto a balcony. Scents of wildflowers and grasses wafted in.

It should have been peaceful, but Zared was left itching with the need to
do
something. He and Theod had kept themselves as busy as they could, making sure the Acharites were settled, reconstituting what councils they could, trying to keep people busy, but it was a sham business.

All Zared wanted to do was get on a horse and lead an army somewhere…or, at the very least, be given the chance to build a permanent home for his people somewhere. He hated being trapped in this boring prettiness.

Gwendylyr leaned forward and threw her set of gaming sticks onto the ghemt board, then clapped her hands in delight. She was winning, and loving it.

Herme chuckled and reached for some more wine, while Theod rolled his eyes in mock despair at Zared, and conceded his squares on the board to his wife. “And with that, my love, you have won the entire board!”

Gwendylyr grinned, and gathered up everyone’s gaming sticks. “Another game?”

“No!” the others chorused, holding up their hands in protest.

“I do not trust your witches skills,” Herme said, with a grin to take away any implied criticism in his words.

“Well, perhaps we can play again this evening,” Leagh said. “I think we need time to plan our strategies against you, Gwendylyr.”

“As you wish.” Gwendylyr was still smiling as she packed the sticks and board away. “It will but delay the humiliation.”

“Gods!” Zared said. “Did she always get her way like this in your home, Theod?”

“Aye. It got so bad I used to actually enjoy going over the county accounts in the evening rather than spend time with Gwendylyr.”

But Theod’s tone was light, and his eyes dancing, and none of the others doubted his love for his wife.

Leagh sighed, and rose. “I must lie down for a while—I must admit this futile tussle against Gwendylyr has exhausted me. Will you excuse me?”

Zared stood as well. “Let me come with you, Leagh.”

She smiled, and put a hand on his chest. “No. Let me rest a while in peace, and then perhaps you and I can go for a walk in the orchards. I can amaze you with my ability to climb the highest fruit trees in search of the juiciest fruits.”

Zared opened his mouth to protest, then realised she was making fun of him. He smiled, very gently and with utter love, and kissed her hand. “Rest well, my sweet.”

Herme rose as well, his face drawn and tired, and offered to escort Leagh to her chamber.

She smiled, and took his arm.

After they’d left the room, Zared turned to the other two and finally let the worry shine unhindered from his eyes. “How will she manage in the wasteland against a Demon,” he said, his voice desperate.
“How?”

Leagh slept, and dreamed.

She wandered through the Field of Flowers, so content and relaxed she was half dreaming even amid her dream.

Her hand was on her belly, and she and her unborn child talked—not with words, but with thoughts and emotions and laughter. She loved her child, and her child her, and while neither could wait for the time when the child would be born, they were not impatient for it.

The child curled up, protected and loved, deep within Leagh’s body, and that contented both of them.

Leagh walked, and let the scent of the lilies seep into her innermost being.

The unborn child screamed.

Leagh jerked out of her reverie, although not out of the dream; wild-eyed she stared about, almost tripping in her hasty attempts to circle and spot the danger.

Her hands clutched protectively over her belly, no protection at all against knife or spear or iron-studded and hard-wielded club.

The child screamed again, and Leagh panicked.