Crusader

  After all, wasn’t almost everyone in this devastated world plotting against her?

  A hand grasped her ankle, and StarLaughter shrieked and tried to jerk herself free.

  The hand tightened, and StarLaughter gave in to an instant of uncontrolled panic.

  Only for an instant, as she realised who held her.

  “WolfStar,” she cried, almost unable to grasp her good fortune. This was a sign from the Stars themselves!

  WolfStar completely missed the momentary joy that swept across StarLaughter’s face. His fingers tightened fractionally about her ankle. “I can feel your heartbeat thudding through your veins,” he whispered. “Did I surprise you?”

  She pulled herself free—she would allow no-one to bind her again, not even WolfStar—and stepped back. Her husband was a mess; his body was covered in bruises, abrasions and weeping scabs. Clotting blood besmeared his chest and belly, and streaked his face and hands. StarLaughter thought he should at least make the attempt to wipe it off.

  Almost as if he’d read her mind, WolfStar absently wiped a hand across his chest, and flicked some of the blood away.

  It made no difference.

  “Why are you still here?” StarLaughter said. “I thought you might have made good your escape by now.”

  But she knew why he was still here, didn’t she? Destiny had meant him to find her. One of her hands twitched, half-extended itself towards WolfStar, then dropped.

  “Who is it?” he hissed, making an unsuccessful grab at the hem of her tattered gown.

  “What?” Surely he recognised her!

  “Who still controls the enchantment in this Star-forsaken land?” WolfStar said. “Why is there still enchantment about?”

  StarLaughter chewed her lip, wondering if WolfStar’s experiences had left him slightly deranged.

  “Tell me!” WolfStar shouted, managing to grab her ankle again and pull her over.

  She fell atop him, puzzlement replaced with anger, and drove her fist into his belly.

  WolfStar cried out and let her go, curling up into a ball and sobbing with agony.

  “You are a fool!” StarLaughter said, finally understanding what WolfStar was on about. She scrabbled back to her feet, making sure that this time she retreated to a non-grabbable distance. “You backed Caelum, didn’t you? You thought he was the one to defeat Qeteb, didn’t you? Ha! He was not the StarSon.”

  “What?” WolfStar said, rolling over and staring at her. “Who is?”

  She smirked, revelling in the knowledge that WolfStar needed her. “Think I am going to tell you? I—”

  “Who?”

  Something howled far to the north, and StarLaughter looked toward Spiredore anxiously. “The Demons will be back soon,” she said. “We must be gone by then.”

  WolfStar gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Have you fallen out with them, my beloved? Have they not given you what you wanted? Have—”

  Exasperated, StarLaughter threw caution to the wind and stepped close, leaning down to grab WolfStar by the hair. She gave his head a wrench.

  “Shut up! Do you want to live? Do you want to stop the Demons?”

  “Are you trying to tell me,” WolfStar whispered, “that their destruction is what you want?”

  She stared flatly at him. “They betrayed me,” she said.

  “Goodness,” he said. “How utterly surprising.”

  StarLaughter pursed her lips, but let his sarcasm pass. “If you come with me,” she said, “I will tell you who the true StarSon is, who controls the enchantment left in this land, and I will tell you where he is.”

  And for all this, she thought, you will love me and aid me. StarLaughter’s face softened at the thought, and she half-smiled.

  WolfStar’s only response was a raised eyebrow. The bitch was mad!

  “You bastard,” StarLaughter said. “Would you lie there until the Demons ride their beasts over you? Would you lie here until the north winds finally rob your desiccated flesh of its last drop of moisture? Would you lie here until—”

  “It seems,” he said, “that at the very least I must lie here until you purge yourself of every last stored curse of the last four thousand years.”

  She threw his head back until his skull cracked on the cold-baked earth. “You are worse than a fool, WolfStar.” She took a deep breath, then leaned down and grabbed his hair again. “Praise every star that exists that the Demons have not yet thought to rob me of the scrap of power they condescended to give me.”

  And she began to haul WolfStar effortlessly towards Spiredore, WolfStar howling with rage and frustration and agony the entire way.

  StarLaughter paused in the atrium of Spiredore and looked carefully about. Then she cocked her head and listened.

  Nothing.

  WolfStar still hung from her hand, very slowly unwinding himself from the defensive huddle he’d been forced to assume when she’d dragged him inside the tower.

  What in curses’ name was she doing?

  StarLaughter ignored WolfStar’s almost inaudible mutterings and groans, concentrating instead on the silence of the tower rising above her. Should she risk it?

  Ah, but what choice did she have! None! And WolfStar even less.

  “Spiredore,” she said. “We would go to the northern Icescarp Alps.” And StarLaughter placed her foot on the first of the steps, and walked upwards.

  WolfStar screamed as she dragged him effortlessly after her and the edge of the first step dug into his ribs and then his hip.

  Within a few steps StarLaughter increased her gait to a trot, giving WolfStar’s head an impatient twist to shut him up.

  Qeteb raged when he emerged from Spiredore to find StarLaughter gone. Not because he was in any manner frightened of her, or even because he needed her, but because she had disobeyed him.

  She had flaunted him, and no-one did that and lived to enjoy their small rebellion.

  “Sense her!” he hissed to the other Demons, and they sent their senses scrying over the entire land.

  Nothing.

  Then Qeteb sent his far sight and his power raging over the land. Where? Where? Where?

  But wherever it was, StarLaughter had managed to evade him.

  How? She had no magic that could withstand his!

  Where?

  Furious, Qeteb sent firestorms tumbling about Tencendor. They ravaged from the Murkle Mountains to the Nordra, and from the Minaret Peaks to the cliffs of Widewall Bay. Sheets of ice fell from the sky, and impaled creatures as they scrambled to avoid the fireballs. Molten earth spurted in great gouts from the chasms that wound over Tencendor.

  And even this did not flush forth StarLaughter, nor reveal her presence.

  Qeteb slid down from his beast, strode over to Barzula, and hauled him from his mount to the ground.

  He sent a furious armoured foot booting into the Demon’s abdomen. “Where is she?”

  “I do not know, Great Father!” Barzula screamed.

  “Where is she?” Qeteb roared as he punched Sheol in her throat, sending her to the ground as well.

  “I do not know, Great Father!”

  “Why did you not kill her?” Qeteb bellowed.

  All four Demons now huddled on the ground, their faces pressed into the dirt.

  “We thought you might like to play with her,” Sheol eventually whispered.

  Qeteb fell silent, regarding his Demons.

  “Get up,” he said, and turned away, staring into the northern distance. StarLaughter had escaped very far away, and that probably meant north. But not only had she escaped, she had somehow managed to cloak herself from his power, and that Qeteb did not like at all.

  She should not know how to do that…and if she had found the means to do so, it meant that there was still some secrets left in this land that Qeteb did not understand.

  Secrets probably powered with the knowledge of the Enemy.

  “It should not be so,” the Midday Demon whispered to himself. “Haven’t I ravaged this land co
mpletely?”

  But even as he said it, Qeteb knew that his power was not yet absolute. The power of the Enemy continued to linger within the land—the Sanctuary was the perfect example of such power—and until the StarSon was dead, Qeteb could not destroy it completely.

  He looked skywards, and beckoned. “My lovely,” he said. “I would speak with you.”

  StarGrace spiralled down from the sky.

  “I need you to hunt,” said Qeteb.

  Spiredore deposited StarLaughter and WolfStar in a world that was different to the one immediately about the Maze and Spiredore, but that was, nevertheless, substantially the same.

  StarLaughter stood and stared, smiling and seemingly uncaring for the moment that WolfStar lay crumpled and semi-conscious at her feet.

  The trip through Spiredore (or, rather, the journey up its sharp-edged stairs) had not been kind to him.

  StarLaughter let him be for the moment, allowing her eyes and senses to absorb the scenery. The Icescarp mountains had always been frigid and barren, picked clean by the icy winds that whistled over the northern Iskruel Ocean and through every blackened crevice of the ranges. But before Qeteb had wasted the land, the mountains had always seemed alive…almost as if warmth smouldered under their cold, hard skin, and all one had to do was find the way down through the crevices to reach it.

  Then, of course, the Icarii had made their home in the mountains. Talon Spike had been the greatest mountain of all, and the Icarii had gradually tunnelled and chiselled away its interior to create living spaces in which to enjoy their exile from the southern lands.

  When she and WolfStar had plotted and hungered their way through murder and into destruction, Talon Spike had been a place of refuge and haunting beauty. Most of it had been excavated even then…and StarLaughter had actually grown up inside the mountain rather than in the southern Minaret Peaks. Her mother, CoalStar, had preferred the views and the scent of the ocean winds amongst the Peaks.

  StarLaughter knew many of Talon Spike’s secrets, and although she’d known the mountain had crumpled when Qeteb sent his destruction rippling over the land, she hoped that the one secret she needed to hide from the Demon had remained safe and intact.

  And so it had.

  The cellars and basements of Talon Spike—StarLaughter was unaware that Axis and Azhure had renamed the mountain Star Finger—were places of great enchantment. StarLaughter did not know the details, but she did know that the basements of Talon Spike were protected by wards to deflect the power of enemies who sought those Icarii who sheltered within.

  If the enchantments still existed, they would protect her—StarLaughter hoped—from the Demons’ power. Oh, the Demons would surely hunt for her, but they would not do it themselves. The Demons were obsessed with the hunt for the StarSon, and so Qeteb would set the Hawkchilds to StarLaughter’s discovery.

  And that suited StarLaughter’s logically-maddened plan perfectly.

  They’d emerged from Spiredore’s blue tunnel at the northern foot of Talon Spike. Of the mountain, only the lower third remained: the top portions lay over nearby peaks and in valleys in great, black, jagged boulders. StarLaughter looked about the area where she stood; it was pebbly, slick with ice and crisscrossed with cracks and chasms, but it was navigable nevertheless. Here had once wound a great glacier, but that had exploded into billions of deadly ice shards during Qeteb’s rape of the land, and the shards had dispersed over the entire Alps.

  Now, the hidden tunnels into the mountain’s basements were revealed.

  StarLaughter grinned, and dragged WolfStar towards the entrance to a tunnel slightly to the east.

  After three steps, WolfStar finally managed to wrench himself free with a mighty effort.

  “You cold-souled bitch!” he cried, his breath frosting in the air. “What are you doing now?”

  “Trying to save your life,” she said, leaning down to grab him once again. “You’ll thank me for it soon enough.”

  WolfStar laughed, hard and bitter. “And doubtless you also work to save Tencendor from the Demons.”

  “There are better things for us to save than the damned land.” Don’t you hear our son screaming for us to save him? Don’t you hear him, WolfStar?

  “You were ever the traitor, StarLaughter. That is the one thing you cannot betray.”

  She straightened, and stared at him. Her face was inscrutable. “We loved each other once.”

  “It was a lie. We never loved each other. We only used each other.”

  She refused to hear his words. “We can love each other again.”

  “Have you gone mad?” WolfStar rolled over a little, laughing at his unintentional joke, and managed to get to his feet.

  “Good,” StarLaughter said. “You can walk. Now I won’t have to drag you.”

  “I can walk away from you, you treacherous whore,” WolfStar whispered, and he gave a sudden, great lurch to the edge of a chasm.

  “No!” StarLaughter screamed, and lunged for him, but it was too late.

  “You’ll never get your claws into my soul again,” WolfStar said, and stepped off the edge.

  StarLaughter dropped to her knees, her wings rising behind her. Surely she could haul him out!

  But the gap was too narrow. WolfStar had fallen into a chasm less than two arm-spans wide, and while it was wide enough to gobble him up, it was not wide enough to give StarLaughter room to manoeuvre her wings in order to effect a rescue.

  The chasm dropped to unknowable depths, black rock slicked with ice, and there was no sign of WolfStar save for a smear of blood on a rock some two paces down.

  StarLaughter stared, and then laughed, sending it ringing down the chasm. “You might think to escape me, or think to fool me into believing you dead, WolfStar,” she shouted, “but your efforts are wasted. Our love is destined!”

  And then she lifted her head, and glanced at the sky. The laughter died from her face, and she got to her feet, slipping very slightly on the ice, and turned towards the tunnel entrance. WolfStar had escaped for the moment, but StarLaughter knew that Fate would ensure their paths crossed again.

  After all, weren’t they meant to enjoy a destiny together?

  An instant’s hesitation, then StarLaughter ran inside the tunnel, wondering if, at the least, she might find a cloak left over from the Icarii’s residency.

  The Hawkchilds soared in a great black cloud in the thermals that rose from the central plain of the wasteland. They had been set to the hunt, and they revelled in it.

  Save…save for the object of the hunt. Like StarLaughter had once done, the Hawkchilds had given their allegiance to the Questors in return for power and an entry back into the world they’d been tipped from.

  Like StarLaughter had once been driven, the Hawkchilds were driven by one necessity: revenge on WolfStar. If the Questors—the Demons—gave them power, well and good. The Hawkchilds were grateful and they would do the Demons’ bidding.

  So long as their bidding did not interfere with the great quest for revenge, and so long as they were not required to hunt one of their own.

  And the Hawkchilds still regarded StarLaughter as one of their own: they had not learnt of the shift in her priorities, or of the deeper madnesses that had claimed her mind.

  Nevertheless, they did as Qeteb ordered and rose on the thermals before separating in a dozen different directions. They would find StarLaughter, but for their own purposes, not Qeteb’s.

  StarLaughter walked through the corridors of the deep underground interior of Talon Spike. Some sections of the corridors had crumbled when the top of the mountain had exploded, and the rubble forced StarLaughter to sometimes scramble over it, and sometimes detour through alternative hallways.

  This was not the Talon Spike she remembered.

  In her time the Icarii had used Talon Spike mainly as a summer retreat, a pleasure palace. Consequently, the very fabric of the mountain had been consecrated to the pursuits of pleasure: seduction nests, silken spaces for sleeping
, great soaring halls for singing and flight dances. Even the walls had been steeped in music and laughter.

  Now all was grey and silent. StarLaughter realised that this was largely due to the cessation of the Star Dance—the Icarii had breathed life into the mountain almost exclusively through the enchantments they’d woven from the Star Dance—but she could also see that Talon Spike had been put to a more sober purpose over past times.

  She passed chambers that were more ascetic than luxurious—and what Icarii ever enjoyed asceticism? She walked into some of the lower halls that were filled with stacks of books and parchments, rather than silken banners and musical instruments. She glanced through sleeping chambers that had beds designed for one (for one!) rather than two.

  StarLaughter paused in the doorway of one chamber and shuddered. It looked almost as if…as if the mountain had been used as a centre of learning and study rather than pleasure!

  “Well, at least Qeteb did nothing but good here when he destroyed,” she muttered, continuing on down the corridor. “Learning! What had come over the Icarii!”

  Despite the depressing degree of soberness and asceticism, StarLaughter finally found what she’d been looking for in a chamber only two levels above the basement: a chest of silken wraps. She sighed with pleasure as she lifted out a scarlet robe edged with beaten gold, and she hastily shed her tattered and bloodstained blue robe and put on the scarlet one.

  StarLaughter wasn’t sure how her blue robe had got so befouled, nor why she’d allowed herself to continue wearing it for so long.

  There was a mirror to one side and StarLaughter stood contentedly and preened, smoothing the material over her body, twisting this way and that in admiration.

  How many birdmen had lusted after this body? WolfStar certainly, and StarLaughter knew that many other birdmen had wanted her as well. Had she ever indulged any of their lustings? StarLaughter’s brow creased. No. No, she hadn’t…had she? She’d always been true to WolfStar.