Crusader

  DragonStar blinked, and refocused on the Gate itself.

  The millions of seething characters had all gone, and the Gate surrounds were now blank stone.

  Save for the single carving that topped the archway.

  It depicted The Sacrifice. The Sacrifice that DragonStar would have to choose. Katie? Faraday? Or himself?

  DragonStar stared at the carving, and nodded, for it told him nothing he had not known for a very long time.

  The carving blurred, and then rippled away, leaving nothing but bare stone in its passing.

  DragonStar turned his head slightly to look at Sicarius sitting at the head of his pack.

  “Wait here,” the StarSon said, “until I whistle my need for you.”

  Sicarius inclined his head. The Hunt was surely close now.

  Then DragonStar looked at the blue-feathered lizard, sitting slightly to one side of Sicarius.

  “Wait here,” said DragonStar, “until I have need of your light.”

  And the lizard inclined his head.

  DragonStar looked back to the Gate, and drew his lily sword. Belaguez tensed.

  “For this,” DragonStar cried, “you and I were both born, Demon!”

  And the Star Stallion leapt through the Gate.

  As soon as he had disappeared, the forty-two thousand trees drifted as close to the Maze as they dared, forming a single line around its entire perimeter.

  There, Ur standing and shifting impatiently from foot to foot among them, they waited.

  DragonStar rode, but he did not find the journey to the Dark Tower as easy as the first time he’d ridden through the Maze.

  Then, the way had been free and clear, and the Maze had sung and screamed its encouragement propelling him towards the Dark Tower.

  Now foulness sought to block his way. All the creatures packed into the veins of the Maze seemed as one. Legs and arms and limbs and teeth lunged at him indiscriminately, as if attached to the one body, the one mind. DragonStar sliced to this side and to that with his sword, and it wrought great damage, but it was Belaguez who worked best to clear a path for him.

  The Star Stallion screamed and shook head and tail. Millions of tiny stars exploded into the dense blackness that surrounded them, and as they struck home, the creatures drew back, snapping and snarling, or screaming and writhing if one of the stars burned its way through flesh.

  A way opened before horse and rider, and the Star Stallion needed no encouragement. He plunged forward, breasting his way through the dark creatures as a swimmer through the surf, lunging with teeth, the thousands of stars sizzling about his head and haunches catching and reflecting the mirror blade of the lily sword as it arced through the air again and again.

  They rode through a nightmare.

  The stars and sword created a path, but that did nothing to alleviate the fetid savagery about them. Hands and claws and gaping jaws reached incessantly for them, teeth snapped a finger’s breadth away from flesh, foulness filled the air. Horse and rider both found it difficult to breathe.

  But though DragonStar responded to the threat, and though he swung the lily sword this way and that, he barely saw the horror about him.

  His mind had let go the images of past battles and the memories of countless, extinct races. Now all DragonStar thought about was Faraday.

  Faraday, caught in the arms of Qeteb.

  Faraday, undergoing again the same horror she had at Gorgrael’s touch.

  Beautiful, courageous Faraday, no doubt intent on sacrificing herself again, if only it might save one person beyond herself.

  DragonStar reviled himself for making her go through all this again, but it was necessary. Necessary for him to be able to make the right decision when Qeteb presented him with the choice.

  Belaguez continued his lunge forward, and DragonStar arced down again and again with his sword.

  Poor Faraday. He deserved her hate.

  Faraday writhed in Qeteb’s grip, overcome with the hopelessness of her situation, and railing at herself because she could do nothing to aid Katie.

  The Midday Demon stood before the black marble tomb, facing the door of the mausoleum. He was attired in his black armour, black plate wings held out behind him.

  He was invulnerable, impenetrable, unconquerable.

  Qeteb had won, and he knew it.

  He stood completely still, at odds with the two writhing figures he held out to either side of him.

  His left hand was buried in the glossy brown curls of Katie, and she wept and cried softly, sickened by the closeness of the Demon, and by the hopelessness of the wasteland which, in this tomb, was magnified tenfold.

  Qeteb’s right hand dug into the vulnerable white flesh of Faraday’s upper left arm.

  Her white gown was torn and bloodied—all that held it to her body was the rainbow band about her waist—and Faraday was heavily bruised on her face and legs.

  Faraday’s fear, that she would be taken and offered again as sacrifice, had materialised into a horrible reality. DragonStar was riding through the Maze towards the Dark Tower—she could feel him with every beat of her heart. But Faraday could also feel his determination and his resolve, and she knew that nothing would stand in the way of his ultimate purpose, and that purpose was, as it had been for Axis, Tencendor. The salvation of the land before all else.

  After all, hadn’t every other part of her nightmare with Gorgrael been revisited? This would, too.

  Faraday writhed and wept, and succumbed to hopelessness.

  The StarSon rode, and he drew close to the Dark Tower.

  As he did so, the black tide of maniacal creatures drew back, and let him be.

  The final bite must be Qeteb’s.

  Belaguez snorted a last time, and shook his head so that stars littered the path leading to the Dark Tower.

  There was a faint tinkle of music as the stallion trod carefully into the paved area before the Dark Tower.

  DragonStar looked up. The tower rose bleak and silent, although DragonStar could feel it throbbing with purpose.

  The Choice lay within.

  DragonStar lowered his eyes.

  Three hounds sat before the entrance. They were motley and diseased, and contagion dripped from their jaws.

  Sheol, Mot and Barzula.

  A slight movement to one side caught DragonStar’s eye, and he glanced…and nodded.

  The shadow inclined its head, ever at service. His choice had been well made.

  DragonStar looked back to the Tower, and slid down from Belaguez’s back. “Wait,” he said.

  He walked towards the three demonic hounds, graceful, lithe, apparently confident.

  “Step aside,” DragonStar said as he approached them, “for my battle lies with your master, not you.”

  The hounds snarled, but they slunk to one side, and DragonStar looked beyond them.

  The door gaped wide and black.

  Faraday saw the shadow step into the door, and she sobbed. How had it all come to this? Why? Why?

  DragonStar, as his father before him, barely glanced at Faraday’s suffering, although it affected him as deeply as it had Axis.

  His concentration was all on Qeteb.

  “And so it has come to this,” DragonStar said softly.

  “And so it has come to this,” Qeteb agreed. His voice was cold and harsh, as if he was consumed by such anger he could barely elucidate the words.

  “I have no time for games, or sweet musings over past memories,” Qeteb continued. “And so, as is my right, I offer you the final choice. Do you choose Katie, and so save Tencendor? Or do you choose from your heart, and sacrifice Tencendor for Faraday?”

  “No! No! No!” Faraday screamed, writhing pitifully in Qeteb’s agonising grip. “DragonStar, I beg you, choose Katie! Save Katie!”

  “You would sacrifice yourself?” Qeteb said, and laughed. “Again? My, my, Faraday, isn’t your obsession with self-sacrifice a trifle self-destructive?”

  Faraday ignored him. DragonSt
ar was looking at her now, and she held his eyes with all the love she could muster. “Please, DragonStar, let me die. Take Katie, she is far, far more important. Her life is more important—”

  “Not to me,” DragonStar said softly.

  Faraday wept, and cried out again. “No! I beg you, choose Katie! Please, please, DragonStar, choose Katie! I want to die! Please, please, believe me. I WANT to die!”

  “Ah,” Qeteb whispered, ignoring Faraday. “I can see the love on your face, DragonStar. Poor, foolish, DragonStar, love will prove your downfall, as it proved Goldman and DareWing’s.”

  DragonStar ignored him. He looked away from Faraday, weeping piteously, and stepped up to Katie.

  Qeteb made no move to stop him, or to touch him.

  “Katie,” said DragonStar, and dropped down on one knee before her. “Know that I love you.”

  She nodded, and turning her face slightly so Qeteb could not see, let DragonStar see the sheer relief flood across it.

  DragonStar rose, and stepped in front of Qeteb. “I love Faraday,” he said, “and she has suffered and sacrificed enough. I choose Faraday.”

  “No!” Faraday screamed. “No!”

  “Faraday,” DragonStar said, “did I not once say to you that Tencendor does not need your sacrifice again? Tencendor does not need you to die for it. I do not need you to die for Tencendor.”

  Qeteb roared with laughter, and flung Faraday into DragonStar’s arms. “Fool!”

  DragonStar seized Faraday, and dragged her, weeping and struggling, back a few paces. “Behold, beloved,” he whispered into her ear, “how Tencendor will sacrifice itself for you.”

  “No,” she murmured, worn out with her hopelessness and her despair. “No. Let me die. There is nothing left. Not now…not now.”

  “There is life and love left,” DragonStar said softly, “and no need for your death. All that Tencendor requires of you is that you witness. It does not want your death! Instead, it offers up itself for you.”

  He caught her face in his hand, and turned it back to Qeteb and Katie.

  Qeteb was still roaring with laughter. Lost in his victory, he had not heard a word that DragonStar had said to Faraday. He still held Katie by her hair in his left hand, and with his right he produced a wickedly gleaming kitchen knife.

  Faraday fought as hard as she could against DragonStar. What was he doing? Qeteb was going to kill Katie! No! No! She screamed, shrill and despairing.

  Qeteb dragged Katie in front of him, and jerked her head back.

  The girl was calm, and she stared at Faraday with eyes of such love that Faraday could not bear it.

  “No,” she whispered, but she had lost the desire to struggle now. DragonStar was too strong for her, and Qeteb too evil. Between them, they were going to kill Katie.

  “For you, Faraday,” Katie whispered, and she closed her eyes and tilted her head back even further as the blade flashed through the air.

  Blood splattered everywhere.

  Azhure sat despondently on the gravel of the GateKeeper’s island, one hand resting on her aching, but now neatly bandaged, calf. SpikeFeather sat close by, his head resting in his hands. He had a headache, but little else in the way of injuries. The ice sisters sat on either side of him, running their cool hands over his brow, murmuring to him, holding him close.

  Azhure thought she could have done with some of their comfort, but the ice sisters had no thought of comforting anyone but SpikeFeather, and Azhure thought she would get little compassion from the GateKeeper.

  The woman sat at her table before the pulsating glow of the doorway into the AfterLife. Before her were two bowls, but the GateKeeper’s thin, pale hands sat in idleness before them.

  She transferred no balls from one bowl to the other.

  The GateKeeper raised her eyes and saw Azhure’s stare.

  “No souls pass this way now,” the GateKeeper said softly. “All bypass the Gate and step directly into the Field of Flowers.”

  “Is that what lies beyond the Gate?” Azhure said.

  The GateKeeper smiled, a secretive expression on her face. “I have never told what lies beyond the Gate,” she said, “and will not do so—”

  She broke off, and stared at a distant point over Azhure’s shoulder. “Another customer?” she said. “Why? How?”

  Azhure twisted about.

  Far away a glowing outline glided along the black River of Death towards the island of the Gate.

  The GateKeeper took a harsh intake of breath, and, as the figure glided closer and mounted the loose grey gravel of the island, Azhure gave a soft cry herself.

  It was Katie.

  Katie was dead?

  “As ever she will be,” murmured the GateKeeper, and then the shade of Katie was standing before the woman’s table, her eyes great and sorrowful, her hands folded neatly before her.

  The GateKeeper lifted a metal ball from one bowl and held the hand over the other bowl. “Are you going through, Katie?”

  “Aye,” Katie said, then her expression cleared and she smiled. “Rejoice, GateKeeper, for your task is done. Time is ended, and the Gate must close.”

  The GateKeeper smiled also, an expression of such sweetness that Azhure, watching, felt her eyes fill with tears.

  “Then go through, my child, and rejoice yourself that your task is done.”

  “Katie?” Azhure said. “Katie—”

  Katie turned her head very slightly so she could see Azhure. “When you see Faraday,” she said, “will you tell her that I love her? That I love her enough to die for her this time?”

  And then she was gone.

  The instant she glided through the doorway the GateKeeper seized her two bowls and flung them into the air.

  “Done!” she screeched. “Done!”

  Metal balls rained down, and Azhure, as SpikeFeather and the two ice women covered their heads with their arms.

  “Take my hands!” the GateKeeper cried, and literally lunged over her table towards the foursome. “Take my hands!”

  And she grabbed Azhure with one hand, and SpikeFeather with the other as the sisters gripped the GateKeeper’s forearms.

  The Gate exploded.

  Azhure screwed her eyes shut and screamed, but even as she did so she heard the GateKeeper cry out herself.

  “The Gate is dead! Time is extinct!”

  And then there was nothing but a black void.

  Chapter 67

  Bring Me My Bow of Burning Gold…

  Something had gone horribly, horribly wrong, and Qeteb knew it the instant the blood splattered out from Katie’s throat.

  He had gutted the wrong girl.

  DragonStar had chosen correctly.

  But how could this be so when his captains had won, three to two?

  They had won, hadn’t they?

  Or was there something he’d misinterpreted?

  Tencendor took one last, dying breath, and the devastation of death consumed the land as the last of Katie’s blood flowed from her tiny, frail body.

  The sky cracked.

  The earth shattered.

  The air exploded.

  Qeteb threw Katie’s drained corpse to one side. “Then it’s just you and me,” he said, calm now in the face of disaster, “as it ever was.”

  “As it ever was,” DragonStar agreed.

  Qeteb, blank-faced, stepped away, vanishing into the shadowy land beyond the encircling columns of the mausoleum. The silent, dark forms of Mot, Barzula and Sheol vanished directly after him.

  DragonStar took Faraday—now deep in shock—and led her unresisting to one side, sitting her down against one of the columns. “Wait,” he said. “All will be well.”

  Axis, as everyone in the column, panicked as Creation withered about them.

  Firestorms raced across the plains, and mountains trembled and collapsed in upon themselves.

  The darkness and coldness of a complete vacuum descended upon the land.

  Wait, a voice echoed through the minds
of all within the convoy, and they knew it for the voice of Leagh’s Child, all will be well.

  And even though darkness consumed them, and the feel of the land beneath their feet vanished, all continued to survive.

  All that remained of the land that had once been Tencendor was the black pulsing thing that was the Maze: an island of madness in a sea of destruction.

  DragonStar straightened, and whistled.

  The baying of the Alaunt filled the air, and their creamy, eager bodies wound about his legs.

  A shadow darkened the doorway of the mausoleum.

  “At your service, sir,” said Raspu, dressed for the destruction of Creation in his stiffly starched butler’s uniform, “as always.”

  DragonStar nodded. “Good.” He held out his hand. “Deliver me my bow.”

  And Raspu inclined his head, and stepped forward. In his hands he held the Wolven, and its quiver of blue-fletched arrows.

  DragonStar took the bow, and slung the quiver over his shoulder and back.

  He held out the bow, and looked at the lizard.

  The lizard grinned and, lifting a claw, sent a shaft of light glimmering along the entire bow.

  It burst into fire, although the flames did not consume the wood, nor harm DragonStar.

  DragonStar nodded at the lizard, then slung the burning bow over his shoulder.

  Then he lifted his voice, and sent it singing through the Maze.

  “Run, Qeteb,” he said, “for the clouds are about to unfold, and the Hunt about to begin.”

  Chapter 68

  Twisted City

  Qeteb fled through the Maze, Sheol, Mot and Barzula at his heels.

  DragonStar did not instantly follow. He straightened the quiver of arrows, and adjusted the Wolven so it lay, comfortable, across his back. He lifted and resettled his jewelled belt and purse.