Crusader (29 page)

Ur leaned forward, and grabbed the Mother’s skirt.

Qeteb’s fist tightened, and the Mother’s eyes bulged in agony.

Faraday was convulsing, and DragonStar did not know what to do. Leagh and Gwendylyr hovered about, their hands patting helplessly, their faces frantic.

Everyone else stood about in a powerless circle.

DragonStar raised his head and stared at StarLaughter, his expression hard.

“It’s not me,” StarLaughter said, and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what ails her.”

More than anything else it was her utter disinterest that convinced DragonStar. He glanced at StarGrace—she also shrugged—and then he looked back to Faraday.

Red weals had appeared about her throat, and her eyes were bulging and agonised.

“In my fist,” Qeteb said, turning his face slightly to talk to the other Demons, “I hold the life of the land. Pitiful, isn’t it?”

Blood now stained the neckline of the Mother’s robe, running down in rivulets to blotch and dampen its bodice.

“Nothing can stop us now,” Sheol said. She had rearranged her snout into a more elegant form.

“Except blindness,” Ur said, and Qeteb growled.

“Will blindness save Her, now?” he said, and his fist abruptly tightened.

The Mother’s neck broke with a snap.

Ur’s face contorted, her hand clenched even tighter within the Mother’s robe, and then she sagged, almost lifeless, and let go.

A scream tore through the air of the corridor, and DragonStar stared at Faraday, not understanding how she could have screamed so loudly and not opened her mouth.

He’d thought she’d been calming somewhat.

“Leagh!” Gwendylyr yelled, and DragonStar blinked and realised that it was not Faraday who had screamed at all.

Leagh had turned away, and was now rolling about on the floor of the corridor, as agonised as Faraday was, her arms wrapped about her belly, screaming and shrieking as if she was gripped by the final extremities of death.

StarLaughter turned away and rolled her eyes. Couldn’t they manage a simple walk down a corridor without enduring some drama of epic proportions? Who
had
DragonStar gathered about him?

“Tch, tch,” she muttered.

Qeteb’s fist opened, and the corpse of the Mother dropped to the ground.

His fist shrank back to a more normal size.

Ur blinked, blinked again, and looked up, as if she had just woken from an afternoon slumber and was mildly disorientated by the encroaching scenes of death and destruction.

Qeteb stood, not two paces from her, a charming grin on his face.

The Mother’s corpse lay huddled between them.

“Silly little woman,” Qeteb said, pleasantly enough to Ur, “time to die.”

He reached forward, both his fists now expanding.

Ur lifted her head, scented the air, and then roared.

Urbeth and her daughters bounded and leapt through the devastated landscape.

They grinned, for hunting lay ahead. The Mother was dead, and that was annoying, but the Hunt still went on, even if the earth screamed and died.

Qeteb flinched, and momentarily pulled back his fists, then he recollected himself. Silly woman, what was she doing, yelling like that?

He reached forward again. The Mother had been disgustingly easy. This one would be even—

Something sharp, heavy, and very, very painful hit him in the centre of his forehead.

He reeled back, blinking.

Ur sat back on her bench, replacing the heavy terracotta saucer on top of her pot.

None of the Demons had noticed that, as she’d struck Qeteb, her other hand had slipped something into the pot.

“Senile old nag!” Qeteb roared, shape-changing into a huge, nail-bristled boar.

He shook his tusks at Ur, his small, piggy eyes red and raging.

“Now that,” Ur said, quite calmly considering the circumstances, “is a little
too
infantile. Why can’t you meet me as a man?”

Qeteb’s form flowed back into the fully armoured version of his being.

“Better?” he said, and Ur smiled happily.

“Oh, much,” and from nowhere she produced a length of branch, tempered by the fires of the Demons’ destruction, and began to belabour Qeteb about his
helmeted head with it, all the while keeping her pot safely clutched under one arm.

The other four Demons circled in closer, but they nevertheless kept their distance, their eyes very carefully watching Qeteb.

Surely he should be able to handle this one, decrepit woman? Was he weak, then?

Ambitious plots began to hatch in each, individual Demonic head.

Was Qeteb…vulnerable?

Qeteb roared, lifted his hands and tried to catch the branch.

But Ur was in her element, dancing about on suddenly nimble feet, cackling and crowing, the branch weaving through the air to escape Qeteb’s clutching hands and thunder repeatedly against his metal head.

Qeteb suddenly had enough. In the blink of an eye he transformed into a tiny weasel, and he scuttled under Ur’s robe, biting at her ankles.

Her cackles stopped, although her capering continued even more frantically, and she lowered the branch and struck about her legs, trying to catch the darting, annoying animal.

Suddenly she shrieked, and toppled to the ground (all the while falling so that she protected the pot), her skirts stained with blood.

The weasel poked its inquisitive (bloodied) head from underneath her hem, then wriggled free.

Qeteb assumed his armoured form again, and raised one metalled foot.

“Your belly,” he snarled, “is never going to be quite the same again.”

And his foot smashed down.

“The Mother is gone,” Faraday whispered, her fingers to her throat. “Dead.”

DragonStar lowered his face into a hand. Urbeth hadn’t helped, then.

A pace or two away Leagh lay quiet. She was conscious, although very wan and weak, and Goldman and Gwendylyr both crouched by her side, frightened for her.

Leagh’s hands were still clutched tight about her belly.

Gods, DragonStar thought, looking about the group. How are we supposed to defeat these Demons and bring Tencendor back to life?

A step at a time, he answered himself. A step at a time.

“StarLaughter,” DragonStar said, rising. “If you and StarGrace have had such a change of heart, perhaps you can aid Faraday to walk to the chambers below.”

StarLaughter hesitated, her face closed, then she motioned StarGrace forward, and they leaned down ungracious hands to help Faraday up.

StarGrace limped slightly, adjusting her feet from talons to flesh and then back again.

Qeteb’s foot never found its mark. Even as it drove down on Ur’s form, a white blur flew in from one side, and Qeteb found himself driven to the ground, and rolling desperately to avoid the weight of the
thing
that had attacked him.

His companion Demons were having their own problems with two other white beasts that had driven them fifteen or eighteen paces back with the strength of their attack.

Ur rose to her feet, her movements once again those of an arthritic old woman. She put the pot carefully to one side, and methodically dusted down her gown.

She completely ignored the sound of the battle going on about her.

Finally, robe and hair in order, Ur picked up the pot, settled it comfortably in her arm, and said: “I’m ready now.”

As one the three icebears backed towards her, keeping their snarling heads weaving in the Demons’ direction.

“A pretty trick,” Qeteb said, “but one not guaranteed to serve you forever.”

One of the icebear’s forms changed, resolving itself into a tall, elegant woman, her hair grey and iced with silver.

“All magic is
not
dead,” she whispered, “and even amid death, Qeteb, you must surely remember that resurrection is always possible.”

The Midday Demon had endured enough. Drawing upon all of his strength, all his power, every trick he’d ever learned, he rolled back his head, his visor opening with a snap.

Black smoke issued from within, roiling about his head.

“A
very
pretty trick,” Urbeth whispered, “but none of us, I fear, have the patience to wait about to see what it does.”

She extended her arms, and the other two bears, as Ur, crowded close.

“You took your time, sister,” Ur said, and Urbeth’s face tightened.

Above Qeteb’s head the black smoke formed itself into a snake’s head.

“I have no time for a discussion of my faults now,” Urbeth said, as she enveloped the four of them in a blinding snowstorm.

Qeteb’s death leaped forward with the speed and accuracy of a striking viper, but it bit nothing save empty air.

The two women and the icebears had vanished.

S
tarDrifter found Zenith wandering down one of the more isolated corridors of their palace complex in Sanctuary, and wondered at the furtive—almost half guilty—look she gave as she recognised him and reluctantly stopped.

She carefully replaced her furtive expression with a warm and almost genuine smile.

But the hesitancy was still there. StarDrifter could see it crowding the depths of her beautiful eyes.

“Hello, Zenith,” he said, and reached out to take some of the pile of linens from her arms. “Let me help you with these.”

“But I thought…Axis would need you.”

StarDrifter laughed. “Axis? Need me? Never! He has an army, the Lake Guard and thousands of willing winged men and women to aid him. He does not need me.”

Since DragonStar’s departure Axis had lost no time in searching out an—
any—
escape route from Sanctuary. The bridge couldn’t have been the only way…could it?

“And has anyone had any luck?”

“Zenith, it’s only been a few hours. And Sanctuary…” StarDrifter lapsed into silence as he fell into step beside Zenith. Sanctuary was massive. It apparently stretched into infinity. All the reports StarDrifter had ever heard from those Icarii who’d flown as far as they could was that it just stretched, and stretched…and stretched. There was no
“end”. There was no back wall let alone a back door with a helpful sign saying
Use In Case Of Emergency
.

“And Sanctuary hides its secrets well,” StarDrifter finally finished, rather lamely. “As do you. What have you been up to? No-one has seen you for the past few days.”

Where have you been? Who have you been with?

“I’ve been keeping myself busy,” Zenith said, her tone as false as her words.

“Stop,” StarDrifter said. He dropped his pile of linens on the floor, took the pile from Zenith’s arms and threw them to one side, and grasped her hands in his.

She stiffened, and a look of mild panic entered her eyes. “You said you wouldn’t,” she said.

“Wouldn’t
what
? Love you? I cannot help that, nor stop it. Zenith…what’s going on?”

She looked away, her eyes desperately searching for something else she could legitimately look at.

In this barest of corridors there was nothing, and so Zenith reluctantly looked back into StarDrifter’s face.

“Who have you been with?” he asked, very low. His hands tightened fractionally.

She briefly closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and answered with all the courage she had. “WolfStar.”

“What! What!”
StarDrifter let go her hands and stepped back in shock and utter anger. “Why WolfStar?
Why
?”

Zenith’s eyes filled with tears, and she clasped her hands. “StarDrifter, I wanted to end it. I needed to see him, and come to terms with how I felt about him.”

“And have you?” StarDrifter’s face had gone completely white, but his eyes blazed with such rage that Zenith barely restrained herself from running away.

“I have found…I have found it easy to spend time with him,” she whispered.

StarDrifter was so profoundly shocked that he was incapable of speech. She found it easy to spend time with
WolfStar
and not with him?

“It has been good to be able to talk things through with him.”

“And you can’t talk things through with me?” StarDrifter said.

Zenith flinched, and turned her head away.

“You don’t feel comfortable with
me
, but you can sit and chat comfortably with the man who raped and abused you?”

“He has changed—”

“Bah! WolfStar never
changes
! Zenith, what can you possibly find with him that you cannot find with me?”

Her eyes blurred with tears. “I do not regard him the same way as you,” she finally managed.

StarDrifter’s face and voice were rock hard. “And that is?”

“As a grandfather.”

Nothing else she could have said would have shocked StarDrifter more. He stared, helpless, his mind unable to come to terms with what she’d just said.

“And have you,” he whispered harshly, “managed to go to his bed, then, if you can’t stomach mine?”

She stared at him, then she lifted a hand and struck him hard across his face.

Without a word, Zenith bent and collected the linens, then marched, straight-backed, down the corridor.

StarDrifter stared after her, his entire world collapsing within him.

The room was cool and dim, only a single lamp burning on a far wall.

Zenith silently placed the linens in a chest, then turned and sat on the stool by WolfStar’s bed.

He stretched out a hand, and she took it without hesitation.

“What is wrong?” he said.

Zenith let her tears slide down her cheeks.
This
was all wrong. What she wanted was for StarDrifter to so take her hand, and for her to lean against him and sob out all her woes and let him make them all better.

StarDrifter was all she wanted, and yet here she was with WolfStar. Why? Why?
Why?

Because, strangely, she felt comfortable with WolfStar in a way she never could with StarDrifter. StarDrifter was her loving, protective grandfather.

WolfStar was merely another man: one who caused her complex and conflicting emotions, true, but he was just another man.