Crusader

  Chitter, chatter, we do not like you! We were not supposed to disturb any who came here, save Skraelings—

  —not whale or seal, chitter, chatter, nor Ravensbund or even any of the southerners—

  —Ho’Demi charged us not to nibble at anyone’s minds save the Skraelings—

  —and he saved us, and brought us to this cruel world—

  —and we owe him and respect his wishes.

  Are you Skraelings, chitter, chatter?

  “I am Qeteb, the Midday Demon, and—”

  Why are you here, Qeteb, chitter, chatter? Why do you worm so deep into the ice and disturb us?

  The Demons did not reply, but the Chitter Chatters caught the image of the rabbit chase, and they laughed, chittering and chattering until the Demons scrabbled about furiously in the attempt to get to the infuriating creatures.

  We may not nibble at your minds, nor may we eat you, for we have promised. Nevertheless, we think we have the perfect home for you, chitter, chatter!

  Then, as the Demons felt themselves wrapped in unaccustomed power, and propelled through layers of ice so sharp and cold they felt their bodies torn apart, they caught one last remark from the chitter, chatters.

  We thank you for this amusement, Urbeth!

  If ever I find out who this Urbeth is, Qeteb thought in some pain-ravaged corner of his mind, I will tear her soul to pieces before I consume it.

  They waited for what felt like hours, but which Axis was ready enough to acknowledge was probably only half an hour at most. They huddled in carts, as deep beneath blankets and tarpaulins and cloaks as they could, and hoped they would survive both the deepening storm and the raucous whisperings of the Skraelings.

  They were making a frightful sound. In this snow, no-one could actually see them, but their whispering and whimperings and creepings could be heard above and beneath the shriek of the wind. They were, Axis realised, getting very drunk very quickly on the offerings left them in the snow.

  Gods, he thought miserably, hunching as close to Zared, Azhure and Katie under their shared blanket as he could. We should have saved some of that wine. It would have warmed us against this wind.

  There was a high-pitched squeal, and a bubbling of laughter. Axis felt Azhure, Katie and Zared shudder, and realised that he had, too.

  “Pray gods Urbeth and Ur know what they are doing,” Axis mumbled, “for I do not think we can survive either this storm or the terror of the Skraelings for too much longer.”

  He was about to continue, when Zared grabbed at his arm to silence him. “They’re at the cart!” he whispered.

  Axis fumbled quietly for his sword. He could feel curious fingers patting at the top of the blanket, sharp, cruel fingers. In his mind’s eye he could see the insubstantial creatures, as tall as a man, huge silver orbs glowing in their skull-like faces, and long, pointed fangs hanging down from their oversized, slavering jaws, their clawed hands picking and plucking at the blankets and tarpaulins that lay between them and the huddled masses of Tencendor.

  His hand had tightened on his sword—he could stand this no longer!—when the Skraeling that was investigating his cart gave a sickening belch—Axis could smell the wine fumes through the blankets—let go the blanket, and said, “Oooooh!” in a tone of utter surprise.

  And then Axis heard another voice. Ur. She must be wandering about in the snow with the Skraelings!

  “Hello,” Axis heard her say conversationally, “would you like to see what I have in my pot, wraith?”

  Beside him, Katie giggled.

  And the Skraeling giggled, too.

  Then there came a sound that Axis numbly remembered he’d heard at the battle of Gorken Pass—the Song of the Forest! The Skraeling gibbered in fear, and then shrieked with such terror that Axis moaned and stopped his ears.

  The Song intensified—Axis screamed, hearing Zared and Azhure cry out beside him—becoming a tidal wave of, not death, which the trees had used at the battle of Gorken Pass, but of retribution such as Axis could hardly bear.

  Above all the screaming and wailing—as much of which came from the peoples huddled in the carts as it did from the Skraelings—Axis heard a woman laughing, and he realised it was Ur.

  The Demons found themselves hurtling through ice and then rock, and pain filled them and became such a part of their lives that none could possibly imagine an existence without it.

  And vengeance and anger also filled them.

  No-one should be able to treat them like this!

  What was most disturbing was the knowledge that this land still harboured magic that their destructiveness had not touched.

  Even the rocks and the ice, it appeared, sheltered secrets.

  Qeteb was the first to regain some form of control over both his physical and his magical self. With an effort he’d not had to make since he’d fought (unsuccessfully) against the Enemy’s original dismemberment, he managed to slow their passage through space until he could feel the other Demons regain some control as well.

  I will put a stop to this, Qeteb began to say to them, when suddenly, horribly, they did stop. The rock and earth and ice walls disintegrated about them, and they felt themselves falling through cold, dark air.

  “Ugh!” Qeteb said as he hit very, very solid rock.

  Beside him he heard another five impacts, and low curses and moans of pain filled the dark air about them.

  Qeteb struggled into a sitting position—he’d assumed his metalled, armoured visage—and felt about him with his power, ignoring the mutters and moans of the other Demons.

  Where were they?

  Dark, deep, cold, barren.

  It felt like the most distant of interstellar wastes, but Qeteb understood they’d not travelled beyond the boundaries of Tencendor itself.

  Where were they?

  Underground, with the weight of millions upon millions of tons of rock above them.

  “We’re in a mine,” Sheol said beside him, and Qeteb felt her body crowd his, almost as if she needed the comfort of what physical warmth she could draw from his armour.

  He shoved her away roughly.

  “And we have a mountain atop us,” Mot added, and Qeteb snarled, finally orientating himself within the geography of Tencendor.

  They were deep underground in what the Tencendorians had called the Murkle Mountains.

  Deep in the former home, if Qeteb had but known it, of the Chitter Chatters.

  Qeteb cursed foully, and struck the rock he sat on with his mailed fist.

  The sound of the impact echoed about them until its growing melody drove the Demons to a shrieking, capering dance of frustration and fury.

  How dare anyone do this to them!

  Silence, and Axis tensed, wondering what had happened.

  “Forty-two thousand!” Azhure whispered beside him, “Ur said there were forty-two thousand Skraelings!”

  “Yes, but—” Axis began.

  “Don’t you see?” Azhure whispered furiously, and Katie laughed again, a sweet, happy sound.

  “What?” Axis said.

  Azhure sighed impatiently. “There were forty-two thousand souls that Faraday transplanted out as the Minstrelsea forest.”

  “Yes…”

  “And Ur was their guardian during their years as seedlings.”

  “Yes…”

  “Don’t you understand yet?” Azhure cried, and Zared jumped in, his voice excited.

  “When Qeteb destroyed the forests, the souls went back to Ur!” he cried, and Axis felt Azhure nod her head enthusiastically.

  “Yes! That’s what she has been carrying about in that pot—the forty-two thousand souls who fled back to her when their physical forms, the trees, were destroyed.”

  “And now Ur has used the Song of the Trees to destroy the Skraelings,” Axis said.

  “Oh!” Azhure exclaimed, and wriggled about in further impatience. “Don’t you see? Forty-two thousand Skraelings…and forty-two thousand souls?”

  Axis huddled in st
unned silence as the import of what Azhure had said sank in.

  “Ur has given her souls a new home,” Azhure said into the silence. “The Skraelings.”

  “That’s why she needed them drunk,” Katie put in. “Drunken Skraelings put up no resistance to the souls of the trees.”

  “But where have the souls of the Skraelings gone,” Zared said, “if their bodies are now occupied by the souls of the trees?”

  “Fled to wander weeping and wailing across the ice drifts of the extreme north,” said a voice above them. “Only the most foolhardy of wanderers will ever be bothered by them.”

  The blanket lifted, and there was Ur. “Would you like to meet your army, Axis StarMan?”

  Chapter 41

  The Avenue

  Axis helped Azhure and Katie out of the cart as Zared leapt down into the snow. The wind still blew frighteningly hard and cold, and Axis wrapped his cloak, and a blanket over that, as tight about him as he could.

  He did not say anything.

  As far as he could see in the snowstorm, the entire column was flanked on either side by lines of Skraelings. They stood some four paces apart, several deep, each Skraeling staggered so that it stood in the space between the two in front of it, rather than in direct line with them.

  Without exception the Skraelings stood with their feet buried deep into the drifting snow, their bodies and arms and loathsome heads drifting as they were tugged by the wind.

  Their silver-orbed eyes were lively with intelligence rather than malice, and their toothsome grins were cheerful, rather than malicious.

  For the first time in his life, Axis felt only curiosity as he stared at a Skraeling, not fear or the desire to kill.

  But…

  He looked at Ur, standing to one side with her pot, the saucer lid carefully back in place. Why, Axis knew not, for surely it was empty.

  “For this army I thank you,” Axis said to Ur, “but for what I will use it I do not know, for we will all surely be frozen solid by dawn time.”

  “Then tell them what you need,” Ur said.

  Axis stared at her, then looked back to the drifting lines of Skraelings.

  “We need shelter,” he said, “and warmth. A place to rest and eat and sleep.”

  The Skraelings grinned happily, and then they began to transform.

  Beside Axis, Azhure gasped in recognition, for she was the only one, apart from Faraday, who had ever seen this process.

  The Skraelings uncoiled.

  Their legs thickened, and joined to form massive trunks, while their bodies lengthened and reached for the sky. The Skraelings flung their arms outwards in obvious joy, and they, too, lengthened and their fingers grew and thickened and spread until, in the space of three or four breaths, the Skraelings had transformed themselves into trees again—the huge, spreading trees of Minstrelsea forest.

  With one exception. They had retained their wraith’s insubstantiality, their trunks and branches grey and mist-like, their leaves the silver of the Skraeling eyes.

  They were incredibly beautiful.

  And, despite their appearance, substantial enough to cut out the wind and the storm completely.

  Now Axis could see why they’d staggered themselves in ranks in their long lines down either side of the column. This way not even a breath of wind could penetrate their leaves or trunks.

  In the abrupt cessation of wind and storm, tarpaulins and blankets slowly unfolded back from carts, and unfolded from lumps in the snow that Axis now saw were groups of people huddled together for warmth. People sat up, then slowly climbed down onto the snow-covered ground.

  It was still cool, but in the absence of the north wind and the driving ice and snow, the cold had all but disappeared.

  The trees rustled, and there was a murmur of Song.

  The remaining snow on the ground was swept up in gentle whirls and eddied out between the tree trunks of the forest to be swept away in the outside storm.

  The ground lay clean and dry.

  Axis looked at Azhure, then at Zared, and then back to the sight before him.

  It was beautiful beyond description. The trees had formed a protective tunnel over the entire column, a silvery, shifting avenue of ghost-trees that gently hummed.

  There was a sudden new note to the Song of the trees, and with a start Axis heard what it was.

  The Bogle Marsh creatures had joined their deep voice to that of the trees, and now the entire avenue of trees dipped and swayed, reaching out gentle tendrils of silvery leaves in dance to graze against the cheeks of people and animals alike.

  There was a rush of wings, and all the birds who’d escaped into, and then out of, Sanctuary lifted into the air and sought refuge among the branches of the trees.

  Animals emerged carefully from their hiding places, and nosed about the grass and flowers that appeared among the ridging roots of the trees.

  “I cannot believe this loveliness,” Axis said very softly, and felt a tear slip down his cheek.

  “Then use it!” Ur whispered behind him. “Use it! My beauties are hungry for a revenge!”

  Axis turned, and Ur smiled at him, almost girl-like. Then she lifted her pot and gave it a small shake, and said: “One more to go.”

  And then she was gone before Axis could ask her what she meant.

  Axis spent the next few hours traversing the column on the back of Sal (Azhure had been stunned when he told her how he’d got the horse) making sure that people and beasts alike were settled comfortably.

  He could not oversee the entire column—he suspected that it must stretch for many leagues—but what he saw of the sections he did ride up and down on his patrol relaxed and comforted him.

  Without any apparent effort, or prior planning (or had Urbeth somehow foreseen and planned this?), the peoples and creatures of Tencendor had managed to arrange themselves into much the same type of communities that they had in their former lives before the Demons had come.

  Here were the inhabitants of the villages of southern Romsdale, complete with their remaining herds of livestock, grouped about a series of small fires and cooking grain and vegetables. They smiled and waved at Axis and invited him to join them for a meal, but he refused, saying he had too much to do.

  Further on Axis came across the Nors folk, a shifting, brightly-scarved mass of them, their musical instruments out, their dancing boys writhing amid tight circles of admiring and leering adults. Axis grinned, and rode on.

  Further on yet were the Ravensbund people, sharing space with the still-humming pile of Bogle Marsh creatures (Axis wondered if they had somehow formed an association of collective admiration for their mutually isolated and taciturn ways of life), as well as many of the fey creatures Faraday had rescued from the Minstrelsea and Avarinheim.

  The Avar had split to set up Clan camps within the trees from where they nodded to passers-by, but otherwise made no attempt to speak or commune with other peoples or with Axis. Above them, many of the Icarii had taken up residence with the birds in the branches of the trees, talking and laughing and playing their harps and singing, and floating down in drifts to partake of hot meals at the campfires that were dotted like bright sparks of hope along the length of the column.

  People shifted, walked, traded and laughed up and down the avenue. It was, Axis finally realised with a jolt, a land entire unto itself, protected by the shimmering, magical, musical avenue of trees. Family and community groups had reformed, livestock had huddled comfortably back together in their field companies, and wild creatures had sought isolation and refuge in and among the trees.

  Amid the desolation of the frozen tundra, Tencendor had found hope again.

  In the morning, Axis thought, I will shift this entire avenue south, and see how DragonStar can use us.

  His good humour and hope dissipated the moment he rode back to the cart where Azhure and Katie had set up camp. (Zared had long since ridden back to the spot where the folk of Severin had established themselves.)

 
As he slid off Sal’s back, he saw that StarDrifter was talking earnestly, almost angrily, to Azhure and that her face wore an expression of deep distress.

  Axis almost hated StarDrifter at that moment. What had he said to so upset Azhure? Why couldn’t he just leave well enough alone?

  “Azhure?” Axis said, moving to join her where she stood with StarDrifter by a small campfire.

  An iron pot swung gently on its tripod, the delicious smell of stew and dumplings rising up in heady waves from its interior.

  “What’s wrong?” Axis slid an arm about Azhure’s shoulders, and shot StarDrifter a hard look.

  “It’s WolfStar,” Azhure said, and Axis forgot all his animosity towards StarDrifter in a well-remembered surge of ill-feeling towards the ever-cursed WolfStar.

  Dammit, he’d forgotten him in the fear and haste of abandoning Sanctuary! Axis had left WolfStar in the care of the Lake Guard, but where was he now? Damned birdman! Left to his own devices for more than an hour and he could ruin the future of an entire realm without even breaking into a sweat!

  “Where is he?” he asked.

  “About half a league back,” StarDrifter said, and Axis thought he must have turned Sal’s head around to come back to the head of the column just before he would have reached WolfStar.

  “And?” Axis said.

  StarDrifter took a deep, distressed breath. His eyes suddenly, horrifyingly, filled with tears, and he looked at Azhure, unable to speak any more.

  Azhure briefly closed her own eyes, summoning the courage to speak. How much of this was her own fault? If only she’d taken more care, more damned time with her children!

  “Azhure?” Axis said, his voice tight, angry and fearful.

  “WolfStar has got Zenith,”

  Azhure said. “What?” Axis exploded. “He’s stolen her again?”

  “What damn right have you got to say that?” StarDrifter shouted, stunning Axis into a shocked silence. “What damn fucking right? You abandoned Zenith when she needed you most—curse you! You encouraged WolfStar to pursue her, and to aid Niah in her frightful conquest of Zenith’s body and soul. How dare you now stand there and pretend an indignation that WolfStar has her again?”