Crusader (39 page)

They had once been a part of Leagh’s world, a loved and respected part, and she now found it hard to watch their dying before her.

She lowered her head and wept, and as she did so the flowers faded and disappeared.

It made no difference to the dying before her. As successive waves of creatures crested the ridge, so they fell.

The Icarii wraiths had, it appeared, limitless amounts of arrows.

Eventually it was done, and an Icarii birdwoman settled to the ground before Leagh.

She was exquisitely beautiful, with her ethereal form and sapphire wings and eyes. “My name is FireCloud,” she said, and rested one hand comfortingly on Leagh’s arm. “And I, as my fellows, are here to help protect you at DragonStar’s command.”

Leagh nodded, her sorrow still not enabling her to speak, and she patted FireCloud’s arm.

“DragonStar? DragonStar?”

DragonStar closed his eyes momentarily in impatience, and then turned slightly to the figure which had climbed to join him.

“What are you doing here, StarLaughter?”

She sat down beside him, encased in a thick wrap, but with her head bare and her hair flying in the wind. Gods, DragonStar thought, isn’t she cold?

StarLaughter truly did not appear to notice the extreme of the temperature.

“Something has happened!” she said, and grabbed at DragonStar’s arm. “I can
feel
it!”

“Yes?”

“WolfStar has escaped Sanctuary! He is
safe
!”

“Careful,” DragonStar said, “for this wind might carry your gladness to the Hawkchilds.”

But he nodded to himself anyway. DragonStar had felt the rift in the matter of existence when Urbeth had torn a hole from Sanctuary into the northern wastes. He had no idea how they were managing to survive, or if the Demons had followed them through…but he
had
felt the escape.

“WolfStar must still manage his survival,” he said. “He is not so much ‘safe’, as currently beyond the Demons’ reach.”

“Safe enough,” StarLaughter said, determined not to let DragonStar’s pessimism ruin her joy. She sighed happily, her fingers kneading uncomfortably into DragonStar’s arm. “And soon we will be reunited. DragonStar, where is he? Where?”

DragonStar jerked his arm away, annoyed not only at her inane and persistent belief that WolfStar could not wait to see her again, but also at her irritating presence. This would be a long night, and he would prefer not to spend it with StarLaughter at his side.

“North,” he said, not wanting to give StarLaughter the happiness of a more specific answer.

“North? North? What? In the depths of the Iskruel Ocean? DragonStar, I must go to him! I can’t leave him to the fishes and the—”

“Oh, for the gods’ sakes, woman! Leave it alone! He is in the northern tundra, and—”

“The tundra? But there are Skraelings out there and—”

Despite the trouble a harsh word might bring him, DragonStar’s temper snapped. He twisted around and grabbed StarLaughter’s shoulders. “Leave him be, you demented woman!”

“I cannot!” she responded, her eyes flashing in the clouded night light and pushing his hands away. “He is
mine
, and I will not let him go!” Dear stars in heaven, DragonStar thought wearily, but he moderated his tone when he replied to her. “StarLaughter, he is with those who can protect him, and besides, I doubt they will stay in the northern tundra. They will come south soon enough, and you can wait for them at the foot of the eastern Icescarp Alps—where they met what was once the Avarinheim. You can’t miss them from there.”

And gods help them, he thought, when the meddling and completely crazed StarLaughter turns up. But whatever their difficulties (or, more specifically, WolfStar’s) at least StarLaughter would be out of his hair.

StarLaughter narrowed her eyes as she thought it out. “But they might swing west along the Icebear Coast,” she said. “And if I were waiting at the foot of the eastern Icescarp Alps then I would miss them completely. How do you
know
they will come directly south?”

“Because I believe that my father Axis is leading them, and Axis is a sensible man, and he’d damn well take the
shortest
bloody route to come south! Does that answer your question?”

“My, my,” StarLaughter murmured, “you are testy, aren’t you?”

“It is cold and I am tired of your company,” he said. “Go find your WolfStar if you will, but leave me alone this night.”

She leaned back very slightly, her face angry. “Tonight will be a night of terror,” she said. “I hope you enjoy it. Nay! I hope you
survive
it!”

And then she was gone.

DragonStar looked after her retreating form with relief…and some regret that he’d not thought to ask her to leave her cloak. Terror-ridden or not, this night was going to be a cold one.

When the column of creatures that had wormed their way north from the Maze to the Lake of Life appeared, Gwendylyr initially contented herself with throwing rocks at them from her well-protected fortress within her cave. She’d arrived here just as dusk was falling, and it had taken her only a cursory glance about to know she’d found herself an easily defensible and fortifiable shelter.

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 is 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…