Pilgrim

  The Demons had grown in power feasting on the souls of the living creatures of Tencendor. They were nowhere near their full power, but they’d glutted enough to pull what they needed to them, rather than the other way around.

  Movement. Movement lay below, waiting lustfully.

  Sheol moved forward to the very edge of the Lake, the waters lapping her toes, then seized the neckline of her robe in her hands, and ripped the cloth apart.

  She threw the discarded halves to one size, and stood naked before the Lake the Avar called the Mother.

  StarLaughter stared amazed. Sheol had the form of a female dog. Only her head and arms were vaguely human.

  Sheol dropped to all fours, her arms in the water to the elbows, her hind legs resting on the sand. Her body was thin and covered with a brindle pelt. A short tail stood erect, and between her hind legs hung pendulous dugs, as if she’d only recently nursed a litter of puppies.

  StarLaughter’s mouth curled in distaste. Couldn’t Sheol have thought of a more appropriate form?

  Sheol growled, and hung her head down. Saliva dripped from her jaws in a grey foam, reminiscent of the haze that issued forth from the Demons’ mouths during their hours of feeding.

  There was a rasping to one side, and StarLaughter tore her eyes away from Sheol.

  Raspu. Panting, his eyes on Sheol’s hindquarters, and StarLaughter’s mouth curled even further in distaste. Surely not!

  In the next instant Raspu had torn away his own clothing, revealing a body also shaped liked a dog’s—a great muscled mastiff—but with the flexibility of a serpent, and then he was down on all fours by Sheol’s side, quivering and whining and drooling.

  Another movement, and Mot and Barzula had also torn away their clothes, revealing dog-like forms, and were prancing about in the shallows of the water, tipping their heads back to howl at the new moon just risen above the trees.

  Their heads lengthened and sharpened into serpent heads, their tongues forking in and out, tasting the air.

  “’Tis not me who should be collared and chained,” WolfStar said behind StarLaughter, and she turned and pulled viciously at the chain until he cried out and wept with agony.

  “They are more faithful than you,” she spat. “And dog-like yourself, with the morals of a snake, it is no wonder you appeal to their lusts!”

  She pulled and twisted the chain again, and was rewarded with a howl of pain.

  “Grovel, WolfStar!” she whispered. “Grovel before me and I may yet grant you a speedy death!”

  Only StarDrifter and Isfrael were now left to watch from the trees, their horror increasing with every moment that passed. As Sheol had revealed her bitch-form, Zenith had stumbled away, her hand to her mouth. WingRidge, who had been watching the three of them from the entrance to the stairwell, came forward, put his arm about her, and guided her down to Sanctuary. As they’d gone down, he had passed a quiet word to one of the Lake Guard, ordering him to stop the trail of Icarii and Avar through the trees towards Fernbrake Lake for the time being…until the Demons had got what they wanted and had gone.

  Only StarDrifter and Isfrael—and the unseen woman on the top of the eastern ridge—were left to witness the passing of Fernbrake Lake.

  The four creatures howled and cavorted in the shallows of the Lake, pausing only briefly to urinate and defecate into the waters. StarLaughter watched fascinated, WolfStar appalled, although he treasured the time it drew the Demons’ attentions from him. He sat carefully on the ground, bent protectively over the arm wrapped about his belly, leaning heavily on the other. Every so often he glanced at the boy—he could not think of this creature as his son, even though his colouring and features were so much like his—as also at Niah.

  Niah! If WolfStar had not believed it would call unwanted attention to him, he would have bent his head and wept at his own stupidity.

  Now the Demons had ceased their prancing and defecating and stood still in water deep enough to lap against their bellies.

  One by one the Demons began to tremble. They stared into the Lake, their noses almost touching the water, completely rigid save for the curious quivering that wracked their bodies. The trembling increased by the moment until it seemed as though they were in the final moments of some massive, hysteric convulsion…and yet still they stared down into the depths of the Lake.

  The water changed.

  It happened so subtly, and yet so swiftly, that WolfStar was not sure at what point the Lake ceased being a liquid and turned, instead, to glass. Emerald glass that trapped the Demons’ legs and, in Sheol’s case, her pendulous udders.

  Still the Demons convulsed, the bodies a blur as their muscles spasmed faster than should have been possible, and the convulsions quickly transferred themselves to the glass.

  It cracked, and then the entire surface of the Lake shattered into millions of tiny pieces. A great wind arose from beyond the ridge of the crater, and swept down over the Lake’s surface.

  The glass pieces turned to dust, whipped up into a maelstrom against which WolfStar had to screw his eyes closed and hide his face under an arm. He wanted to reach out for Niah, to shelter her against this murderous whirlwind of millions of razor-edged glass pieces, but he was not able to fight its force, and could only concentrate all his strength on protecting his own body against its fury.

  StarDrifter and Isfrael, protected by Drago’s enchantment, watched silently. Tears streamed down their faces, and Isfrael reached out and leaned a hand on his grandfather’s shoulder.

  Who comforted who, neither knew, but both drew strength from the physical contact. A piercing scream rose on the shoulders of the wind, growing in intensity and density until it seemed as if it filled the entire world.

  It was the Lake, dying, and weeping in its death.

  On the ridge, the woman wailed with it, and sank to her knees, tearing at her hair with her hands.

  Almost as suddenly as it had arrived, the whirling maelstrom vanished, and WolfStar blinked, cleared away the glass shards that had embedded themselves in his eyelashes and hair, and stared out at what had once been the Lake.

  All traces of water and glass had gone, and the Demons—now back to their humanoid forms and attired again in innocent pastel robes—pointed and exclaimed excitedly.

  What had once been a Lake was now a garden, but a garden such as WolfStar had never seen previously.

  It was a garden snatched from the darkest pits of the AfterLife, a wasteland, an abomination. The ground, gradually rising to a small hillock in what had once been the centre of the Lake, was cracked and scarred, bare-baked earth with no grass, no life, and no hope of life. Trees stood bare-branched and blackened, as if consumed in some ancient conflagration that they’d never recovered from. Rambling roses hung from trees and rusted trellises, their leaves and blossoms only a distant memory, flowering instead with needled thorns that reached out like traps.

  The centre hillock was barren, save for a windstorm that spun around and around on its crest, thick with dust and the thick, thorny tendrils of a rose bush.

  “Movement,” Sheol said with immense satisfaction. “Come.”

  StarLaughter tugged at WolfStar’s chain, but he’d been ready for her, and rose and stumbled forward before she cut off his breathing. Mot and Barzula seized the boy and girl, throwing them over their shoulders, and striding into the wasteland with no mind for the thorns that reached out to scratch and mar.

  WolfStar could not be so disdainful. He cried out each time a thorn hooked into his flesh, sometimes becoming so entangled in thorns that StarLaughter—the thorns appeared to completely ignore her—had to tug with all her strength to pull him free. By the time they approached the hillock he was covered in bloody scratches, and his wings had suffered so badly they were almost completely defeathered.

  “Movement!” Sheol cried again. “Quick, Barzula! The boy!”

  Barzula stepped forth, strode up the hillock until he was just outside the confines of the whirling wind. Then, in an a
brupt movement, he hurled the boy inside.

  Instantly, blood and flesh whipped out of the whirlwind as the boy’s body was torn apart by the thorns inside. A piece of the ghastly meat struck WolfStar in the face and he gagged, reminded forcibly of the moment Zenith had flung Niah’s poor dead body at him.

  No-one else minded. The Demons and StarLaughter were leaning forward in their eagerness, their eyes bright, their breasts heaving with excitement.

  “When?” StarLaughter cried.

  “Now!” Mot screamed, dancing from foot to foot in an obscene gig, and as he screamed, so a man stepped forth from the bloodied rose wind.

  WolfStar’s mouth slowly dropped open.

  What now stood on the hillock was a nightmarish parody of an Icarii male. He was over-tall, and his naked body was obscenely roped with thick muscles which bulged so thick at chest and arm and thigh that WolfStar could not see how the man could possibly walk. From his back sprouted fully developed golden wings—too fully developed, for they were half as large again as a normal Icarii male’s, and feathers sprouted unevenly from flight muscles that bulged as thick as they did on the man’s body. The hands that dangled at the end of each arm were like spades; the fingers were as long and as thick as every other appendage, but flexible nevertheless.

  They would miss no crevice that could be exploited.

  The man’s face was curiously flattened, with a broad and thick nose and forehead under dense, dull copper curls, and light violet eyes that were narrow and cunning—almost piggy—rather than bright and clear.

  WolfStar looked closely. They remained lifeless, for Qeteb still had to be animated with soul, but they were chilling for all that they lacked spirit. The mouth was wide, its lips thick, red and moist, a pink flicker of tongue appearing between large, crowded white teeth.

  Sheol turned slightly so she could see WolfStar. “The girl,” she whispered.

  “No!” WolfStar cried. “No!”

  “Why?” Sheol said. “Is this not what you wanted? Mot! The girl!”

  Mot stepped forward, the girl slung over his shoulder, but instead of hurling her into the rose wind as Barzula had done the boy, he handed her to the Qeteb-man.

  “Take her,” he said, and the Qeteb-man held out his arms and took her weight from Mot.

  “The wind,” Sheol commanded, and the Qeteb-man turned, but not before WolfStar had seen him run his spade-hands over the girl’s breasts and belly…exploring, his body instinctively reacting to the feel of the female flesh under his hands.

  No! WolfStar screamed in his mind, but at that instant the Qeteb-man flung his Niah into the rose wind, and particles of flesh and blood again streamed out across the wasteland. When Niah finally emerged, completed in body, if not in spirit, WolfStar had to turn his face aside.

  She was flawless, beautiful. Her alabaster body was female physical perfection, and glossy black hair streamed down her back to her buttocks.

  Her face was stunning in its loveliness, fragile and yet strong at the same moment.

  WolfStar knew in that instant that he’d lost. The Demons would use Niah, and her potential power, to their own ends. WolfStar felt nauseous: sick with self-disgust, sick with horror at how his plan to save Tencendor would now likely condemn it.

  What had he done?

  “There are many kinds of death,” Sheol again informed WolfStar, her voice almost kindly, “and you shall now experience another one. She is female,” she said to the Qeteb-man. “Take her.”

  The Qeteb-man seized the woman, his all-encompassing hands groping and kneading her unresisting flesh as he pushed her to the ground. The Qeteb-man dropped his weight upon her, forcing her to his requirements without any thought to the damage he might thereby do to her body. Coldly, his vacant eyes fixed on some distant point, the Qeteb-man drove himself roughly inside the Niah-woman and began to grunt and thrust, and each grunt and thrust ate into WolfStar’s soul, tore into his being, and he lowered his head and wept as Niah lay on her bed of thorns, her hips and breasts jerking and jiggling with every movement of the Demon’s frantically plunging body.

  There, in that desiccated rose garden, Qeteb took his bride as WolfStar raved, StarDrifter and Isfrael watched in morbid fascination, and the Goodwife Renkin, still atop the ridge, climbed to her feet, her face hard, and descended into the forest below.

  62

  A Song of Innocence

  Deep in the earth beneath Carlon, a writhing, twisting mass of voles, rats, and sundry burrowing insects and rodents continued to scrape their way through the earth. Among them moved the patchy-bald rat, biting and nipping, driving them on, on, on, for the day was coming, the day when the Lord would rise, and preparations must be made and souls must be in place for that moment.

  The Day of Resurrection.

  Above, the night was deep and moonless.

  Drago stood at the open doorway by which he had entered Carlon, his sack tied securely to his belt. Drago had begun to think of it as his weapons sack; his father may have once slung axe and sword from his belt, now his reviled youngest son slung a hessian bag.

  The Wolven was slung over Drago’s left shoulder, the quiver of arrows hung down his back. In his right hand Drago held his staff, and in the other he held Katie.

  By his feet crouched the feathered lizard. Its growth had stopped, and it had now stabilised into a form slightly larger than a mastiff hound, but still retaining the shape of a lizard.

  Behind Drago came Faraday, wrapped in a bright scarlet cloak that she had hunted all afternoon for in the wardrobes of the palace, and with two blankets under her arm; Leagh, equally wrapped in a thick and warm black cloak and also with a blanket; Zared, his worried eyes rarely leaving his wife; and finally, Theod clad in light chain mail under his cloak and with his sword already drawn in his hand.

  He’d heard of the eels that had attacked Drago’s boat on the way over from Spiredore. The gods alone knew what else the Demons might launch at them. Theod did not want anything stopping him from reaching Gwendylyr this night.

  He concentrated all his thoughts on her, and pushed the memory of their two sons to the dim recesses of his mind. They were gone, sacrificed to Drago’s unexplained plans, and Theod would not allow himself to dwell on them any more.

  “Well?” an anxious voice asked from far back in the dark passageway.

  “The boat is still here, Herme,” Drago replied, and he stepped carefully down, wishing that if he’d retained only one thing from his Icarii heritage it could have been their exquisite grace and balance.

  The feathered lizard leapt in, causing the boat to rock violently, and Drago planted his staff firmly down and leaned on it, silently cursing the lizard with every gutter and kitchen oath he’d ever known.

  Once the boat had settled, he laid the staff in the belly of the boat, lifted Katie in and saw her safely seated, helped Faraday and then Leagh into the boat, and seated himself, leaving Zared and Theod to manage as best they could.

  Herme appeared in the dark hole of the doorway. “Be careful,” he said. “And return quickly.”

  “Keep safe,” Drago said, then briefly smiled, nodded, and leaned his weight into the oars, sliding the boat silently out onto the waters of Grail Lake.

  Faraday drew the cloak yet tighter about her and shivered. Animals of all shapes, sizes and breed lined the shoreline about the city’s walls. Men and women, as naked and vile as Leagh had been, crept back and forth, snatching at themselves or at whoever came close. All the demented were relatively silent, whether because of the night or some unknown plan, Faraday did not know, but they shuffled and moved in undulating waves, constantly pushing against the walls.

  Pray we get back in time, Drago thought. He’d felt the increase in the power of the Demons, and knew they’d been successful at Fernbrake Lake.

  How long would it take them to get to Grail Lake? Over a week, but less than two.

  Not long. Not long.

  Drago pulled harder on the oars.

  The gig
antic eels humped their bodies out of the water as the boat moved across the Lake, but they did not attack. Perhaps they could see the feathered lizard sitting sentinel in the bow of the boat, or perhaps their attention was focused on something within the Lake, for they rarely lifted their heads to watch the boat’s progress.

  “There is something different about the Lake,” Faraday said, and Leagh nodded.

  “I feel it, too. There is a…a thickness…here which I do not understand.”

  Faraday trailed a hand through the water. “A thickness…” she repeated, and then wiped her hand on her cloak with an expression of distaste.

  Drago watched both women, sitting directly opposite him, with careful eyes. Leagh, while cautious about the danger surrounding them and their mission this night, was nevertheless serene and calm. She had come through death and found nothing but peace.

  Faraday, on the other hand, was as jumpy as a cat. Drago remembered how sure she’d seemed when first he’d come back through the Star Gate. Gradually that confidence had dissipated.

  It was him, Drago knew that. They’d fallen unwanted into love, and he thought that neither of them would find much happiness in it. Faraday did not want love, it had betrayed her too much already. And he? For weeks Drago had thought all he wanted was Faraday and her love, but after their conversation on the parapets, he now knew that even if she did come to him, would it be to him that she came, or the resemblance in movement and expression to his father?

  Would she ever get over her love for Axis? She said she had, but Drago did not believe her. It continued to cripple her life, and Axis, utterly unintentionally, had returned to cripple Drago’s as well. How pleased Axis would be, Drago thought, if only he knew.

  Drago watched Faraday’s eyes skim over the water, and remembered the passion in those eyes as she’d spoken of Axis and the nights they’d spent in love.

  Would she ever look thus when she spoke of him?

  He grimaced, and dropped his face, and bent back to the oars.