Crusader

  DragonStar stared at the Demon, but said nothing.

  “Ah, you were but a babe in arms, then,” Qeteb said. “Well. Gorgrael knew that one of them would prove the distraction that would destroy Axis’ concentration when your golden father finally met the warped and unlovable Gorgrael, but the poor chap wasn’t sure which one. He had time and resources to go for only one. Finally, as legend well knows, he decided on Faraday, which was the wrong choice because your father loved Azhure more and could afford to ignore Faraday being torn to bloody pieces before his eyes.”

  “What is the point of all this, Qeteb?”

  “Well, I am glad you asked me that, my good friend, because I am faced with much the same dilemma. I am certain that there is one woman around who could destroy your concentration when we finally meet face to face in the Maze, but I am dithering over which it might be. Faraday, or…”

  “Or?”

  “Or…Katie.”

  DragonStar turned aside. “I do not love Katie.”

  “You do not lust for her in the same way that you lust for Faraday, but, oh yes, you do love her. And, far more importantly, you need her. For what, I am not at all certain, but I can feel your need for her bubbling through your veins.

  “And so the game is, what will destroy your concentration more? Watching Faraday, whom you love and for whom you lust, torn to shreds before your eyes…or Katie, whom you need for whatever noble and magnificent purpose you have been created?”

  Again DragonStar made no reply.

  “The game, my dear and wonderful cousin,” Qeteb whispered, kneeing his beast so close to Belaguez that the stallion snorted with disgust, “is that I don’t have to choose, do I? I have the resources to take both. How will you feel, Dragodearest, when I toss both their broken bodies at your feet?”

  DragonStar pulled Belaguez to a head-tossing halt. “I don’t believe you. There is no way you can take—”

  “Ha! I have you!” Now Qeteb had turned his beast about to face DragonStar. “Faraday you knew I could take with Sheol—were you counting on it?—but you thought Katie safe. It’s Katie, isn’t it? Katie! Katie whom you hid from me—but don’t think I can’t find her!”

  Qeteb kicked his beast into a series of tight circles, laughing maniacally. “Katie! Katie! Katie! Katie!”

  And then Qeteb pulled his beast to a violent halt, and he growled. “I’ll take both, you bastard. Both! One I’ll slaughter for the sheer joy of it, and one I’ll shred to win!”

  Katie! Katie! Katie! Katie! The evil whisper echoed about the waterway and everyone sat up straight, eyes darting about.

  “Qeteb,” said Katie, and burst into tears.

  Azhure gathered the girl into her arms, tightening them protectively about her, and looked to SpikeFeather. “What can we do?”

  SpikeFeather, and both the ice women, were looking carefully about, checking the dark cavities between the buildings that littered the cavern they currently drifted through.

  “Not much, probably,” he said. “But I don’t think there is any need to worry. Qeteb is now so closely tied to DragonStar and their combat above ground that he can’t—”

  A cold howl drifted through the cavern.

  “Dogs!” Azhure said.

  “No,” one of the ice sisters replied. “Hounds.”

  “Hounds?” said SpikeFeather. “But that’s impossible. There are no hounds in the—”

  “Demons,” said one of the sisters.

  “Mot and Barzula,” said the other.

  The baying grew closer, and suddenly Azhure gave a soft cry and pointed.

  A pale hound crouched atop the shoulders of a massive statue of a man sitting on a rock with his despairing face in his hands.

  As they watched, the hound lifted its head and howled.

  It was answered by the other hound some fifty or sixty paces further down the waterway, waiting at the very edge of the canal.

  As the punt glided closer, the hound bared its teeth, growled, and crouched as if to spring.

  Azhure pushed Katie into the bottom of the punt, sheltering the girl with her body.

  Katie! Katie! Katie! Katie!

  Qeteb’s voice thundered through the waterways, and Azhure wriggled herself as tightly and as protectively about Katie as she could.

  SpikeFeather leapt to his feet, rocking the punt wildly, but he was pushed down again by one of the ice sisters.

  “Leave this to us,” she said, and the next instant both women had leapt for the bank—transforming into icebears as they did so.

  The hounds took one look, then bounded out of sight into the streets and alleyways of the abandoned stone city behind them, the icebears in close pursuit.

  The icebears were fast, magically so, but the hounds always kept one breath, one leap, one thought, ahead of them. They ran through great abandoned boulevards with ancient banners, thick with dust, hanging from street lighting and buildings, and they dashed through alleys so narrow the icebears howled as their shoulders and flanks rasped against the confining stone walls.

  And always the hounds, slavering and howling as if they were but one breath away from collapse, leaped one pace ahead of the sisters.

  Finally, the hounds dashed into a blind square bounded by tall, blank-windowed tenement buildings, scrambling frantically about the confining walls, howling and screeching with fear.

  The icebears slowed to a walk, their shoulders hunched with power, their faces curled in snarls so tight their eyes had almost disappeared, placing their paws slowly and deliberately one in front of the other in murderous anticipation.

  Both hounds backed against the far wall, their tails between their hind legs, and whimpered.

  One of the sisters paced closer, her growls reverberating about the confined space, and she slashed out at the hounds with a massive paw.

  Her claws should have torn flesh from bone. Instead, nothing impeded her swing as it glided through shadow and fakery.

  She fell silent, her eyes narrowed even further.

  She lunged with both teeth and claws, and as she hit both hounds, they faded completely away.

  As she collapsed on the ground, her sister pivoted about on her haunches, peering about the square.

  But there was nothing. Nothing save the mocking laughter of the demonic enchantment as it literally vanished into thin air.

  After a while, Azhure cautiously raised her head. “Are we safe?”

  SpikeFeather nodded. “We are safe for the time being. I think we should—”

  “Safe?” said a soft, distorted voice. “Safe? Safe from who, pray tell?”

  And again the punt rocked wildly, even though neither SpikeFeather nor Azhure had moved.

  A pair of hands appeared on either side of the punt, and gripped its sides.

  Close behind came two heads—half eel, half humanoid—rising, dripping, from the water.

  “Mot,” said one.

  “Barzula,” said the other, by way of polite introduction, and then the hands were slithering into the punt.

  Azhure had no time for a cry. Again she rolled herself into as tight a ball about Katie as she could, trying to protect the girl with her own flesh and blood. Above her she heard and felt the sounds of SpikeFeather battling with one of the Demons.

  Cold hands ran over Azhure’s spine, their thin fingers tracing every bone, every crack, and now she could not help the cry. “SpikeFeather!”

  But SpikeFeather was no use. Mot had him pinned in the bow of the punt, the Demon’s hands wrapped about the birdman’s throat.

  The thin, cold fingers suddenly dug deep into Azhure’s back.

  “SpikeFeather!” she screamed again, but it was no use, he couldn’t help her, and the agony was so great that Azhure had to try to roll out of the way.

  And the instant she did so, the fingers were gone, and she could breathe once again.

  Azhure struggled up, leaning on her hands, and then grabbed for Katie, meaning to pull the girl under her body once more.

&
nbsp; But Katie was gone, hauled over the side of the punt and into the water. One of the Demons had dragged her to the bank, and lifted her out of the water as Azhure watched.

  Azhure scrambled to her feet, about to jump into the water to swim to the bank, when the punt rocked again, and she felt a taloned hand digging deep into the calf of her left leg.

  She moaned, the pain too vicious for her to cry out loud, and collapsed in the bottom of the punt.

  The other Demon, now wearing the form of a huge, horned toad with taloned, almost human hands, twisted its grip, and Azhure screamed.

  SpikeFeather lay motionless at the other end of the punt, and even in her own agony Azhure caught a fleeting glimpse of blood.

  “You’ve hung about too long,” the toad whispered. “Time to make your intimate and eternal acquaintance with the AfterLife, bitch.”

  “I don’t think so,” a new voice put in from the opposite side of the waterway to which the other Demon held Katie. “Her time is not yet ripe. Soon, but not yet.”

  The Demon who held Azhure scrambled about to face the newcomer, his grip loosening on Azhure’s leg.

  Azhure blinked, her eyes blurred with tears of pain, and half raised her head to look herself.

  A tall, black-haired woman with a cadaverous face stood there, her hands folded calmly before her.

  Azhure blinked again, knowing she’d seen this woman before, but not quite able to place her.

  The woman—was she the most beautiful woman in creation, or the ugliest?—turned her eyes very slightly towards Azhure.

  The Sepulchre of the Moon, woman. Where you came to your true understanding.

  Azhure gasped. Of course! After she’d given birth to RiverStar and DragonStar, WolfStar had hauled her out of her pain-filled chamber and hurled her down the steps that hugged the cliff face of Temple Mount. There, in the Sepulchre of the Moon, she’d met the other seven Star Gods…and the woman.

  The keeper of the gate into the AfterLife.

  The GateKeeper.

  The toad roared, and, in a massive leap, lunged from the punt towards the GateKeeper.

  Without apparent hurry, the GateKeeper raised her hand and tossed something towards the toad.

  It was a small metal ball, and before it could strike the toad, the Demon had screeched and twisted mid-air to fall several paces away from the GateKeeper.

  As he fell, the toad rolled away and transformed back into the humanoid form of Mot.

  He rose to his feet, and sneered at the GateKeeper. “Foolish dupe!”

  “A dupe?” the GateKeeper said. “Then why twist away so frantically, Demon Mot?”

  She received no answer save a vicious snarl, and then Mot vanished to reappear on the other side of the waterway with Barzula and Katie.

  The girl was twisting futilely in the Demon’s hard hands, whimpering and staring round-eyed at Azhure.

  Azhure turned back to the GateKeeper.

  “Do something!” she said. “Save her, please!”

  The GateKeeper looked at Azhure, then looked back to Katie.

  “No,” she said.

  “Save her!” Azhure screamed, one hand clutching at her bloody and useless left leg.

  “No.”

  “Save—”

  The GateKeeper looked very calmly back at Azhure. “Her time is nigh,” she said. “I will do nothing for her.”

  At that, both Mot and Barzula broke into disdainful laughter. They would have said something, save just at that moment there sounded the close roar of an icebear.

  Mot looked at Barzula, and the Demon’s hand tightened about Katie.

  “She’ll make a tasty morsel for Qeteb,” Mot said, and then they were gone, Katie with them.

  “Katie!” Azhure whispered. “Oh gods, Faraday, what have I done?”

  “Your best,” the GateKeeper said, and then suddenly she was in the punt with Azhure and SpikeFeather. She lifted the birdman’s limp head, and grunted.

  “Unconscious, but not cruelly hurt,” she pronounced, and then looked up as the two icebears appeared on the side of the waterway.

  Both were growling and swinging their heads back and forth in frustration and fury.

  The GateKeeper laughed, but not unkindly. “Your mother will not be pleased with you,” she said, and then sobered as she looked at Azhure, blood still pumping out of her leg.

  “We must see to that,” she said. “And to this bump on the birdman’s head.”

  “Can you take us to Axis?” Azhure said.

  The GateKeeper shook her head. “There is turmoil in the air. And death. You will be safer with me for the moment.”

  And she laughed again, harsh and yet beautiful. “Who knows what reacquaintances you will make at my Gate!”

  Azhure stared at the GateKeeper, then bent her head into her hand in unconscious imitation of the stone statues on either side of the waterway, and wept.

  “Oh, Faraday! I am so sorry!”

  Chapter 63

  Hunting Through the Landscape

  From Fernbrake, Axis swung east, driving his war band, the trees and the column of Tencendor’s survivors as fast as he could.

  Every day he rose from his bedroll before sunrise—easily, as he rarely slept more than an hour or two at a time—and badgered his war band into action. Grabbing what food they could, they were mounted and riding into the corrupted landscape as the sun topped the desolate ridges of the Rhaetian Hills and the Minaret Peaks. Both lines of ridges were now well behind them.

  Fanning out from the war band were some thirty thousand trees. The column was relatively safe from both rear and flanks now, and Axis could afford to send the majority of trees out hunting through the landscape for every piece of breathing corruption they could find. Although Axis and the war band tended to stay in one group, searching out herds of demented livestock, the trees ranged far and wide, sometimes in groups of half a dozen, occasionally in groups of about fifty, but mostly individually, each intent on assuaging her need for revenge against the Demonic hordes creeping across, or under, what was left of Tencendor.

  While Axis and his war band attacked the herds, the trees attacked and destroyed the individual creatures, or those who wandered in twos and threes.

  Their branches waved impossible heights into the sky, and snatched anything from gnats to birds. On one occasion, Zared swore he had seen one disembodied branch literally detach itself from its tree, lunge into the sky, grab a screeching raven, then drop down to reattach itself to the trunk of the tree.

  Twisting, seeking branches had other uses as well. Many was the time Axis and his companions saw a tree stop, study what appeared to be a bare patch of ground, then burrow its branches deep into the earth, hauling wailing weasels, foxes, rabbits and whatever other prey sought to hide itself within the soil.

  Everything the trees found, they killed. Quickly, mercilessly and completely. Bodies were torn apart so that nothing was left to reconstitute itself under whatever demonic power inhabited it. Flesh was trodden into the earth, blood was cast into the wind.

  The wasteland was splattered with the remains of the possessed.

  Each day they moved east, sliding faster and faster as Axis urged Pretty Brown Sal forward, sliding closer and closer to the Maze.

  Leagh travelled comfortably in a well-rugged and cushioned cart in the convoy, Gwendylyr by her side. She nursed her Child, marvelling at the Girl’s beauty and, even at this extremely young age, Her extraordinary self-possession and awareness. The Girl suckled at Leagh’s breast, regarding Her mother with deep blue eyes that Leagh swore reflected stars deep within their depths.

  And flowers. Sometimes when her Child breathed softly in sleep, Leagh could smell the scent of lilies on Her breath.

  Her Child was extraordinary, beautiful, gracious, loving beyond compare…and vulnerable.

  Ur and Urbeth spent a great deal of the time with Leagh as well. Ur clucked and chuckled in her old-womanish way over the Child, but when the babe slept, Ur’s face crease
d with worry and the cares of every nursery-keeper, and she would look at Leagh and say:

  “Keep Her safe. She is still so vulnerable. If Faraday…if Faraday falls then the Girl will fall also.”

  Whenever Ur said this, Leagh came close to panic. “Why? Why is Her fate so tied to Faraday? What is it about Faraday? What can we do to help? What—”

  And then either Ur, or Urbeth, or both, would lay a soft hand against Leagh’s cheek and stop her flow of words.

  “We can do nothing, sweet mother,” one of the ancient women would say. “Nothing. We have now done our task, both of us, as you have. Faraday holds the key, and we must wait to see which way she wields it.”

  And thus Leagh was left with her worry, and her love, and nothing to do but nurture the infant she had birthed, and marvel at Her wonder and power, and let the dark wing of her hair fall against her cheek as she leaned down and whispered words of comfort and love to the Child.

  It took them only a few days to draw close to the Maze, and when Axis rode within sight of it, he had to halt Sal and stare wordlessly, horrified at the abomination that had claimed the Grail Lake and Carlon.

  A great, black heart beat in the wasteland. It was Maze and flesh both, its corridors and passages twisting and winding about its own core, the Dark Tower. Within its veins pulsed billions of malformed and psychotic creatures, humanoid, animal, and half-bred horrors that had sprung from the bodies of both: man-bulls, child-foxes, womancows.

  Every so often creatures spilled out of the Maze Gate, expelled like gouts of blood from a bleeding heart. Sometimes the hundreds of creatures set loose with each expulsion scrambled mindlessly about the immediate wasteland, falling victim to the cravings and appetites of other creatures about them, and sometimes they set off in groups of several score, as if purposed by Qeteb for his own dark design. Most of these hordes swarmed up and down the dusty-dry bed of the Nordra—now a great artery of corruption—but several of these dark-minded crowds set off for Axis and his column. Most were destroyed by the ethereal trees before they could cause any harm, and the few that did reach Axis and his war band were quickly dispatched.