SARA DOUGLASS

Crusader

Book Three of The Wayfarer Redemption

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Map

Prologue: An Evil Released

1. The Wasteland

2. The Detritus of an Epic

3. A Son Lost, A Friend Gained

4. WolfStar

5. Of Sundry Enemies

6. The Enchanted Song Book

7. A Wander Through, and Into, Sanctuary

8. The Ploughed Field

9. Of Predestination and Confrontation

10. A Busy Day in Spiredore

11. StarLaughter

12. The Key to Sanctuary

13. Hidden Conversations

14. Envy

15. The Secrets of the Book

16. Fischer

17. Escape from Sanctuary

18. The Joy of the Hunt

19. The Apple

20. Qeteb’s Mansion of Dreams

21. Legal Niceties

22. The Sacred Groves

23. Niah Reborn

24. Zenith

25. Into the Sacred Groves

26. A Gloomy and Pain-Raddled Night

27. Axis Resumes a Purpose

28. Destruction

29. Family Relations

30. The Unexpected Heavens

31. StarLaughter’s Astonishing Turnabout

32. Revival

33. Urbeth’s Plan

34. WolfStar Feels Better

35. Dispersal

36. Pretty Brown Sal

37. Settling In

38. Sanctuary No More

39. Night: I

40. Night: II

41. The Avenue

42. Of Commitment

43. StarLaughter’s Quest

44. The Heart Incarnate

45. Trouble

46. Hidden Conversations

47. The Door

48. Gwendylyr’s Problem

49. The Butler’s Rule

50. The Memories of the Enemy

51. Sliding South

52. A Marital Reunion

53. Sigholt

54. A Troubled Night’s Dreaming

55. A Tastier Revenge Than Ever Imagined

56. StarLaughter’s Awful Mistake

57. South, Ever South

58. Sweetly, Innocently, Happily…

59. Midwiving Deity

60. The General’s Instructions

61. For the Love of a Bear Cub

62. Katie, Katie, Katie…

63. Hunting Through the Landscape

64. The Most Appalling Choice of All

65. Abandoned

66. Choose, DragonStar!

67. Bring Me My Bow of Burning Gold…

68. Twisted City

69. Light and Love

70. The Witness

71. The Waiting

72. The Tree

73. The Garden

Epilogue

Glossary

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Sara Douglass

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue: An Evil Released

“What can we do?” Fischer said uselessly, but needing the comfort of an endlessly repeated question. “What can we do? Bloody what, you ask?”

“Easy, mate.” Henry Fielding laid a hand on Fischer’s tense forearm.

Fischer shifted his arm away then turned his head towards the far, windowless wall. He was in his seventies, a white-haired, emaciated old man, his face deeply lined with the forty-year struggle against the evil that had savaged — pervaded, consumed, destroyed — his world.

When it had begun he’d been a man in his prime: copper-haired, bright-eyed, lithe and energetic, determined to fight and destroy the invading beings.

“Demons” was a strange, horrid word that Fischer had only now learned to use, but which he still found completely distasteful.

“Demons” did not fit a world that was based almost entirely on scientific theory. On logical explanation. On provable fact. On the complete belief in technology that was far more acceptable and comfortable than religious beliefs. “Evil” did not exist. Only scientific fact existed. Only the vagaries of nature and as-yet-to-be- controlled-and-predicted geographical events existed. Only the selfish and arrogant nature of human society existed. Only petty crime by social misfits and corporate crime by the socially successful existed.

Evil had no place in this most rational and explainable of worlds.

Until it dropped out of the sky over New York one blithe and fair Sunday morning.

That was what took us three decades to come to terms with, Fischer thought. The idea that we’d been invaded, not by pastel-coloured and elegantly-elongated extraterrestrials with great dark eyes in shiny Spielberg-like metal-pocked spaceships, but by pure, and utterly hungrily angry, Evil.

And thus for three decades pure Evil in the shape of the TimeKeeper Demons ran amok. Countries were laid waste, save for the moaning, shuffling crazed populations that roamed their dusty surfaces. Cities were abandoned, jungles stripped of foliage, oceans dried and ravaged. Within a year the human population of earth had gone from billions to a few pitiful ten thousand huddled in bunkers, waiting out the demonic hours, and wondering how they could strike back.

The ten thousand were those left sane, of course. There were still countless millions left roaming above ground, their minds completely unhinged, utterly demonised, noisily breeding — and entirely successfully — countless millions of genetically insane babies. Those infants that survived their first five years uneaten (or only partially eaten), grew into even worse monsters than their parents.

Fischer shuddered. The insane (and by now there were billions of them) were still out there, haunting the as yet unreclaimed surface of the planet.

He and his companions might have managed to trap and dismember Qeteb, but the other five Demons continued to howl their destructive way about the planet.

They had trapped and dismembered Qeteb, but not destroyed him.

This was the problem Fischer and his companions now faced. What to do? What to do?

“The other Demons will break through the barriers within the month,” said Katrina Fielding, Henry’s wife. She’d been the one to suggest the idea that the Demons could be trapped by reflecting their own malevolence back at them.

Fischer glanced at her. She was young, in her early forties, a mere child when the Demons had first dropped in.

She’d lived virtually her entire life underground, and it showed. Katrina’s shoulders and spine were stunted, her eyes dull, her skin pallid and flaky. She’d never been able to have children. And after the initial years underground only a scattering of babies, mostly physically or mentally disabled, had been born to the few women who came to term.

We’re dying, Fischer thought. Our entire race. The Demons will get us in the end, even if it may take them a generation or two longer than those they cornered above ground. If the Demons don’t leave soon then no-one will be left who can breed!

No-one sane, that is. The insane hordes above ground multiplied themselves with no effort, and certainly no thought, at all.

The idea terrified Fischer. “Whatever we do,” he said, “we’ve got to get rid both of Qeteb’s damned death-defying life parts, and the other five Demons as well.”

“There is only the one solution,” Henry said. “Devereaux’s proposal.”

Devereaux’s proposal frightened Fischer almost as much as the idea that the sane component of the human race would soon die out, leaving earth populated by the maniacal human hybrids (God knows with what they had interbred upstairs!). But a decision had to be made, and soon.

Why, why, why, Fischer thought, is there no government left to make this decision for us? Why couldn’t we leave it to a bunch of anonymously corrupted politicians to foul up so we can be left with the comfort of blaming someone else?

But there were no nations, no governments, no presidents, no prime ministers, no goddamn potentates left to shoulder the responsibility. There was only Fischer and his committee.

And Devereaux. Polite, charming, helpful Devereaux, who had advised that they just load Qeteb’s life parts on separate spaceships (how convenient that the people inhabiting the bunkers when the Demons had initially arrived tended to be the military and space types) and flee into space.

“Drop them off somewhere else,” Devereaux had said only the day before yesterday. “Or at the least, just keep going. The other Demons are bound to follow.”

“What if Devereaux finds a place to leave them?” said Jane Havers, the only other woman present. “Or just crashes into some distant planet or moon. What then?”

“We pray that whoever inhabits that moon or planet can deal with the Demons better than we have,” Katrina said. “At least it won’t be in our solar system, or galaxy.”

Fischer dropped his face in a hand and rubbed his forehead. Cancer was eating away in his belly, and he knew he would be dead within weeks. Best to take the decision now, before he was dead, and while there were still women within their community with viable wombs.

Somehow the human race had to continue.

“Send for Devereaux,” he said.

Eight days later the spaceships blasted out of the earth’s atmosphere, their crews hopeful that at least they were giving their fellows back home a chance.

What they didn’t realise was that when they’d blasted out of their underground bunkers, they’d left a corridor of dust and rock down which the maniacally hungry were already swarming.

Fischer didn’t have time to die of cancer, after all.

Chapter 1 The Wasteland

No longer did the ancient speckled blue eagle soar through the bright skies of Tencendor. Now Hawkchilds had inhabited the seething, scalding thermals that rose above a devastated wasteland. They rode high into the broiling, sterile skies seeking that which would help their master.

The Enemy Reborn has hidden himself. Find his hiding place, find his bolthole. Find him for me!

Qeteb had been tricked. The StarSon had not died in the Maze at all. The Hunt had been a farce. Somewhere the true StarSon was hiding, laughing at him.

Find him! Find him!

And when the Hawkchilds found him, Qeteb did not want to go through the bother of another hunt through the Maze. All he wanted to do was to reach out with his mailed fists and choke the living breath out of the damned, damned Enemy Reborn’s body!

The fact that he had been tricked was almost as bad as the realisation that Qeteb’s plans for total domination of this world could not be realised until the Enemy had been defeated once and for all.

All Qeteb wanted to do was ravage, but what he had to do was stamp the Enemy into oblivion, obliteration and whatever other non-existent future Qeteb could think of as fast and as completely as he possibly could.

Find him! Find him!

And so the Hawkchilds soared, and while they did not find the Enemy Reborn’s bolthole on their first pass over the wasteland, they did find many interesting things.

It helped immeasurably that all external inessentials, like forests and foliage and homes and lives, had been blasted from the surface of the wasteland, for that meant secret things lay open to curious eyes.

Secret things that had been forgotten for many years, things that should have been remembered and seen to before the Enemy Reborn had hidden himself in his bolthole.

“Silly boy. Silly boy,” whispered the Hawkchilds as they soared and drifted. “We remember you wandering listless and hopeless in the worlds before the final leap into Tencendor. Now your forgetfulness will crucify you …”

And so they whispered and giggled and drifted and made good note of all they saw.

Far to the south a lone Hawkchild spied something sitting in the dust that had once been a rippling ocean of forest.

It was but a speck that the circling Hawkchild spotted from the corner of his eye, but the speck was somehow … interesting.

The hands at the tips of his leathery wings flexed, then grasped into tight claws, and the Hawkchild slid through the air towards the ash-covered ground.

He stood there a long while, his head cocked curiously to one side, his bright eyes slowly blinking and regarding the object.

It was plain, and obviously completely useless, but there was something of power about it and the Hawkchild knew it should be further investigated.

The bird-like creature stalked the few paces between himself and the object, paused, then carefully turned it over with one of his taloned feet.

The object flipped over and hit the ground with a dull thud, sending a fine cloud of wood ash drifting away in the bitter, northerly breeze.

The Hawkchild jumped back, hissing. For an instant, just for an instant, he thought he’d heard the whispering of a many-branched forest.

A whispering? No, an angry crackling, more like.

The Hawkchild backed away two more paces, spreading his wings for flight.

But he stopped in that heartbeat before he should have lifted into the air. The whispering had gone now — had it ever existed save in the dark spaces of his mind? — and the object looked innocuous, safe … save … save for that irritating sense of power emanating from it.

This object was a thing of magic. A fairly sorry object, granted, but mayhap his master might find it amusing.

The Hawkchild hopped forward, flapped his wings so he rose in the air a short distance, and grasped the object between his talons.

A heartbeat later he was gone, rising into a thermal that would carry him south-west into the throbbing, blackened heart of the wasteland.

Qeteb laughed, and the wasteland cringed.

“He thinks himself safe in whatever hideaway he has built for himself,” he whispered (and yet that whisper sounded as a roar in the mind of all who could hear him). “And when I find it… when I find its secret…”

The Midday Demon strode stiff-legged about the interior of the Dark Tower, his arms flung back, his metalled wings rasping across the flagged flooring of the mausoleum.

He screamed, then bellowed, then roared with laughter again.

It felt so good to be whole once more! Nevermore would he allow himself to be trapped.

Qeteb jerked to a halt, and his eyes, hidden beneath his black-visored helmet, fell on the woman standing in the gloom under one of the columned arches.

She was rather more beautiful than not, with luminous dark hair, a sinuous body beneath her stained and rust-splotched robe, and wings that had been combed into a feathered neatness trailing invitingly from her back.

Qeteb wondered how loudly she would scream if he steadied her with one fist on her shoulder, and tore a wing out with the other fist.

She said she was his mother, but Qeteb found he did not like to hear what she said. He was complete within himself, a oneness that needed no other, and he had certainly never been entrapped in her vile womb. She had never provided him with life!

But she had provided him his flesh, and for that Qeteb spared her the agony of sudden de-wingment. For the moment.

There was a movement from another side and Qeteb almost smiled. There, the soulless body of a woman, waiting for him. He lusted, for he found her very soullessness inviting and reached for her, but was distracted by the voice of Sheol from beyond the doorway.

“Great Father. One of the Hawkchilds has returned with —” “With the gateway to the StarSon’s den?” Qeteb demanded.

“No,” Sheol said, and stepped inside. Behind her walked a Hawkchild, carrying something in its hands.

“Great Father!” the Hawkchild said, and dropped to one knee before Qeteb. “See what I have discovered for you!”

He placed the object on the ground before Qeteb, and the Midday Demon looked down.

It was a wooden bowl, carved from a single block of warm, red wood.

Qeteb instinctively loathed it, and just as instinctively knew that it would bring him great fortune.

Beyond the mausoleum the Maze swarmed with creatures dark of visage and of mind; the vast majority of demented creatures within the wasteland had found their way to the land’s black heart. They climbed and capered and whispered through every corridor and conundrum of the Maze, a writhing army of maddened animals and peoples, waiting only for Qeteb, waiting for the word for them to act.

Out there waited a hunting, for the hunt in the Maze had proven disappointing in the extreme. The man, the false StarSon, had offered his breast to the point of the sword without a whimper (indeed, with a smile and with words of love), and now the hopes and dreams of the maddened horde lay in drifts and shards along the hardened corridors of the Maze.

There was a hunt, somewhere. There was a victim, somewhere. There was a sacrifice, waiting, somewhere, and the whispering, maniacal horde knew it.

They lived for the Hunt, and for the Hunt alone.

There was one creature crawling through the Maze who was not at all insane, although some may have doubted the lucidness of the twisting formulations of his mind.

WolfStar, still covered in Caelum’s blood, still with the horror of that plunging sword imprinted on his mind, crawling towards what he hoped might be a salvation, but which he thought would probably be a death.

Creatures swarmed around and over him, and although a few gave him a cursory glance, or a peck, or a grinding with dulled teeth, none paid him any sustained attention.

After all, he looked like just one more of their company.

Chapter 2 The Detritus of an Epic

A rather tumbledown, grey-walled hovel sat in the centre of the clearing. Flowerbeds surrounded the hut, but they were overgrown with mouldy-stemmed weeds and thistles. A picket fence surrounded the hovel and its gardens; most of the pickets were snapped off. The once-white paint had faded and peeled from the pickets that remained whole, so that the fence resembled nothing so much as the sad mouth of a senile gape-brained man.

Ur’s enchanted nursery had fallen into unhappy days.

Two women sat on a garden seat set in a small paved area.

Several of the paving stones had crumbled, and dust crept across the uneven court.

The Mother wrapped Her fingers around a cup of tea and tried not to sigh again. She was tired — the effort of closing off the trails to the Sacred Groves against any incursions by the Demons had been exhausting — but more worrying was Her overwhelming feeling of malaise. The Mother did not feel well. In truth, She felt profoundly ill.

Tencendor had been wasted by Qeteb, the Earth Tree was gone (surviving only in embryonic form in the seedling She had given Faraday), and the Mother could feel the life force ebbing from Her.

But not before — oh gods, not before! — that life could be restored elsewhere!

“Is it gone?” a cracked voice beside Her asked, and the Mother jumped.

“What? Oh, no, thank you, I still have a half cup left.” And yet almost everything else had gone, hadn’t it? Everything…

Ur grumbled incoherently into her cup, and the Mother looked at her. The hood of Ur’s red cloak was lying over her angular shoulders, revealing the woman’s bald skull. The skin over Ur’s face was deeply wrinkled, but it stretched tight and angry over the bones of her skull.

Ur had lost her forest. For over fifteen thousand years Ur had tended her nursery hidden deep within the trees of the Sacred Groves. As each female Avar Bane had died, so her soul had come here to be transplanted out as a seedling in a tiny terracotta pot. Forty-two thousand Banes had transformed in this manner, and Ur had known them all — their names, their histories, their likes and loves and disappointments. And, having cradled them, Ur had then handed them over to Faraday to be replanted as the great Minstrelsea Forest.

Which, after only forty-two years of life, Qeteb had then turned to matchsticks.

Matchsticks! Ur rolled the word over and over in her mind, using it as both curse and promise of revenge.

Matchsticks.

Ur’s beloved had been reviled, murdered, and utterly destroyed by the excrement of the universe.

Her lips tightened away from her teeth — incongruously white and square — and Ur silently snarled at her ravaged garden. Revenge …

“It is not good to think such thoughts,” the Mother said, and laid Her hand on Ur’s gaunt thigh.

Ur closed her lips into a thin hard line, and she did not speak.

The Mother fought again to repress a sigh and looked instead out to the forest beyond Ur’s decaying garden.

Everything was fading. The forests of the Sacred Groves, even the Horned Ones themselves. The Mother had not realised how closely tied to Tencendor the Groves were — as was the health of all who resided in them. Tencendor had been wasted, and if DragonStar could not right the wrong of Qeteb and his companion Demons, and finish what the Enemy had begun so many aeons before, then eventually the Groves would die.

As would Herself, and all the Horned Ones, and even perhaps Ur.

The Mother shot another glance at the ancient nursery-keeper. And perhaps not. Ur appeared to be keeping lively enough on her diet of unremitting need for revenge.

“But We are safe enough for the while,” the Mother whispered. “Safe enough for the while.”

Chapter 3 A Son Lost, A Friend Gained

Sanctuary should have been crowded. Over the past weeks hundreds of thousands of people, as well millions of sundry insects, animals and birds, had swarmed across the silver tracery bridge, along the roadway meandering through the fields of wildflowers and grasses and into the valley mouth. Yet despite the influx of such numbers, Sanctuary continued to remain a place of delightful spaces and untrodden paths, of thermals that seemingly rose into infinite heights, and Mazes of corridors in its palaces that appeared perpetually unexplored.

Sanctuary had absorbed the populations of Tencendor without a murmur, and without a single bulge. It had absorbed and embraced them, offering them peace and comfort and endless pleasantness.

And yet for many, Sanctuary felt more like a prison. The endless peace and comfort and pleasantness had begun to slide into endless irritation and odious boredom which found temporary release in occasional physical conflict (an ill-tempered slap to a face, a harder than needed smack to a child’s legs) and more frequent spiteful words.

For others, it was more personal aggravations that made them feel like prisoners in a vast, amiable gaol.

StarDrifter, wandering the corridors and wondering what more he could do to ease Zenith into the love she tried to deny.

Zenith herself, wondering when it was that she would be able to think of StarDrifter’s embrace with longing instead of revulsion.

DareWing, dying, yet still driven by such a need for revenge that he hauled himself from tree to tree and from glade to glade, seeking that which might ease his frustration.

Azhure, weeping for the children she had lost.

Isfrael, seething with resentment at the loss of his inheritance.

Faraday, her eyes dry but her heart burning, wondering if she would have the courage to accept a love she feared might once more end in her destruction.

Katie, clinging to Faraday’s skirts, grinning silently and secretly, and wondering if Faraday would ever be able to accept the sacrifice.

Again.

Sanctuary was a brooding, sad place for something so apparently beauteous and peaceful.

Sanctuary was proving unbearable for yet one more man.

Axis had spent his life controlling the world that battered at his doorstep. As BattleAxe he had theoretically been subordinate to the Brother-Leader of the Seneschal, but in reality had largely controlled his own destiny as he had the destinies of his command. As a newly-discovered Enchanter he had found he had much to learn, but had gloried in that learning and the added power it gave him (as in the woman it brought him). As StarMan, Axis had held the fate of an entire land and all its peoples in his hand, and he had held it well, plunging the Rainbow Sceptre into Gorgrael’s chest and reclaiming the land for the Icarii and Avar.

Yet in the past year Axis had learned that he’d only been a pawn in some Grand Plan of this ancient race known as the Enemy, and an even tinier pawn of the Star Dance itself which had manipulated not only the Enemy, but every creature on Tencendor.

And for what? To breed the battleground and the champion to best the most ancient of enemies; festering evil in the shape of the TimeKeeper Demons.

“We have all been for nothing,” Axis whispered to himself, “save to provide the Star Dance with the implements for whatever final act it has planned.”

And what part would he play in that plan?

“And damn you to every pit of every damned AfterLife,” Axis murmured, “for making of me a mere pawn where once I had been a god!”

Then he laughed, for it was impossible not to so laugh at his own frustrated sense of importance. Axis consciously relaxed his shoulders, and looked about him.

It was a fine, warm day in Sanctuary — as were all days — and he was walking down the road from Sanctuary towards the bridge (at last! to have escaped the confinement of unlimited safety!). To either side of him waved pastel flowers, wafting gentle scent in the soft breeze. The plain between the mountains that cradled Sanctuary and the bridge that led from the sunken Keep apparently stretched into infinity on either side of the road, and Axis wondered what would happen if he set off to his left or right. Would the magic of Sanctuary eventually return him to the spot from which he had commenced, even though he walked in a deliberately straight line? Would he be allowed to escape the glorious inaction of Sanctuary?

“I wonder if I might ever manage to —” Axis began in a musing tone, then halted, stunned.

A moment previously he had been a hundred paces from the bridge, he could have sworn it! Yet now here he was, one booted foot resting on the silvery surface of the bridge’s roadway.

“Welcome, Axis SunSoar, StarMan,” the bridge said. “May I assist you?”

Axis grinned. The bridge sounded as enthusiastic as an exhausted whore on her way home after a laborious night’s work entertaining her clientele. His grin broadened at the thought. The bridge had borne a heavy load of bodies recently, after all.

And every one of them to be questioned as to the trueness of their intentions.

“Well,” he said, and leaned his crossed arms on the handrail so he could peer into the clouded depths of the chasm below the bridge. “I admit I grow lonesome for some witty conversation, bridge, and I remembered the pleasant nights I spent whiling away the sleepless hours with your sister.”

And was she still alive, Axis suddenly wondered, in the maelstrom that had consumed Tencendor?

“She has ever had a more companionable time than I,” grumbled the bridge. “Here I sat, spanning the depths between your world and Sanctuary, desperate for company yet hoping I would never find it.”

Axis nodded in understanding. Company would have meant — did mean — that complete disaster threatened the world above.

“And, yes,” the bridge added softly, “my sister still lives. The disaster is not yet complete, Axis SunSoar.”

Axis shifted uncomfortably. This bridge was far more adept at reading unspoken thoughts than her sister. “And when the disaster is complete? What then?”

“What then? Victory, my friend. Utter victory.”

Axis straightened, biting down his anger. “Disaster is utter victory? How can that be?”

An aura of absolute disinterest emanated from the bridge. “I am not the one who can show you that answer, Axis.”

“Then who? Who?”

There was no answer, save for a flash of blinding light and a sudden rattle of hooves.

Axis swore softly and raised a hand to shield his eyes against the rectangle of burning light that had appeared at the other end of the bridge. A large shape shifted within the light, blurred, then shifted again, resolving itself into a horse and rider.

The light flared, then faded.

The bridge screamed …

… and then convulsed.

Axis fell to his feet, sliding towards the centre of the bridge as he did so. He lay for an instant, badly winded by the impact.

He was given no time for recovery. The bridge lurched and then buckled, heaving under him, and Axis repeatedly fell over in his scrambling attempts to get to his feet.

The bridge screamed again, and Axis was raked with the emotions of death.

The bridge was dying.

Axis grabbed at one of the handrail supports, but it melted under his fingers leaving them coated with a sticky residue.

One of his legs fell through a large hole that abruptly appeared in the bridge … she was dissolving!

With a desperate heave Axis lunged towards the safety of the roadway, but the bridge was literally falling apart, still screaming, and her death throes tilted Axis further towards her centre, further away from the safety of the ground.

Another section of bridge fell away, and Axis stared down into the chasm, and certain death.

The bridge whimpered, and vanished.

Axis fell… and was jerked to a halt by a hand in the collar of his tunic.

The odour of a horse hot with sweat enveloped him, and Axis felt himself bump against the shoulder of the plunging animal. He grabbed automatically, finding the Sanctuary of a horse’s mane with his left hand, and the wiry strength of a man’s forearm with his right.

“Keep still!” a man’s voice barked. Axis turned his eyes up, and looked into the face of his hated son, Drago.

Except this man was not Drago. Axis instinctively felt it the instant he lay eyes on his face, and he knew it for sure once the man had deposited him on the road to Sanctuary.

This was a man who had once been Drago.

Axis bent over, resting his hands on his knees, and drew in great breaths, trying to recover his equilibrium at the twin shock of the bridge’s death and the appearance of… of…

Axis looked up, although he did not straighten. “What happened?” he said, not asking what he truly wanted to know.

The man slid off the horse, and Axis spared the animal a brief glance.

Gods! That was Belaguez!

Utterly shocked, Axis finally stood up straight, staring at the horse.

“I do not understand why the bridge died,” the man said, and Axis slid his eyes back to him. He was lean but strong, with Axis’ own height and musculature and with coppery-coloured hair drawn back into a tail in the nape of his neck.

The way I used to wear it as BattleAxe, Axis thought involuntarily.

The man was naked, save for a snowy linen cloth bound about his hips, and the most beautiful — and most patently enchanted — sword that Axis had ever seen. Its hilt was in the shape of a lily, and Axis could see the glimpse of a mirrored blade as it disappeared into a jewelled scabbard. The scabbard hung from an equally heavily jewelled belt, balanced by a similarly jewelled purse at the man’s other hip.

Axis slid his eyes to the man’s face.

Plain, ordinary, deeply lined, somewhat tired … and utterly extraordinary. Alive and hungry with magic. Serene and quiet with tranquillity.

Dark violet eyes regarded him with humour, understanding, and …

“Love?” Axis said. “I do not deserve that, surely.”

His voice was very hard and bitter.

“It is yours to accept or not,” DragonStar said, “as you wish.”

Axis stared at his son, hating himself for hating what he saw. “What have you done with Caelum?”

DragonStar paused before he replied, but his voice was steady. “Caelum is dead.”

Axis’ only visible reaction was a tightening of his face and a terrible hardening of his eyes. “You led him to his death!”

“Caelum went willingly,” DragonStar replied, his voice very gentle. “As he had to.”

Axis stared, unable to tear his eyes from DragonStar’s face, although he longed desperately to look somewhere, anywhere, else. “I —” he began, then stopped, unable to bear the hatred in his voice, and unable to understand to whom, or what, he wanted to direct that hatred.

There was a movement behind him, and then Azhure was at his side, as she had been for so many years.

And as she had so many times previously, she saved him from this battle.

Azhure touched Axis’ arm fleetingly, yet managing to impart infinite comfort with that briefest of caresses, then she stepped straight past her husband to DragonStar.

She paused, then spoke. “Did Caelum see you like this? As … as you were meant to be?”

DragonStar nodded, and Azhure’s entire body jerked slightly.

Then she leaned forward and hugged her son.

He pulled her in tight against him, drawing as much love from her as she drew comfort from him.

Axis stared, not understanding, and not particularly wanting to.

Eventually Azhure pulled back and turned slightly so she could hold out a hand to her husband. Her eyes and cheeks were wet, but there was sadness in her face as well, and she continued to hold DragonStar tightly with her other hand.

“Axis? I —”

“What is this, Azhure?” His voice was harsh. “Caelum is dead. Dead! And —”

“Caelum knew he was going to die,” Azhure said. “He accepted it.”

Axis closed his mouth into a cold, hard line.

“And he accepted,” Azhure said, “as we should have done earlier, that Drago …” she glanced back at her son, “that DragonStar was born to be the true StarSon.”

Axis opened his mouth to say No! but found he could not voice the word. The man standing before him was clearly not the sullen Drago who’d moped about Sigholt for so many years, and he was just as clearly a man who wielded such great power that he … he … just might be …

Axis turned his head to one side, and was surprised to feel the wetness of tears on his own cheeks as the breeze brushed his face. “Oh gods,” he said, and sank down on the ground.

“Will you meet with your father in our apartment a little later?” Azhure asked DragonStar hurriedly. “For the time being, I think it would be best if he and I had some time alone…”

DragonStar nodded.

“Thank you,” Azhure murmured, then bent down to her husband. DragonStar vaulted back onto Belaguez’s back and rode down the trail into Sanctuary.

DragonStar chose to ride unnoticed into Sanctuary; no-one noted his entry, and thus no-one disturbed him in the three hours before Azhure sought him out.

“Your father waits for you,” she said, giving DragonStar directions to their apartment. She looked him over — DragonStar had discarded his linen hip-wrap for a pair of fawn breeches, brown boots and a white shirt, but he still wore the sword and jewelled purse at his belt.

“And?” DragonStar asked.

Azhure nodded very slightly. “And he is prepared to accept.”

DragonStar laughed softly. “Prepared to, but has not yet.” “It is a start.”

“Aye, it is that. Azhure … why have you accepted so easily? Even I denied it for long months.”

“Perhaps because I fought to keep you to a viable birthing age when you fought so hard to abort yourself. I have a mother’s belief in her offspring.”

DragonStar paled, both at her words and at the hardness in her voice. He began to say something, but Azhure stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“I had no right to speak thus to you, DragonStar. I have no right to speak harshly to any of my children. I was too absorbed in my magic and in Axis to be a good mother to any but Caelum.”

“Azhure —”

Azhure well understood why he would not call her “mother”.

“— it is never too late to be a friend to your children. I think that you and I will always be better friends than parent and child.”

Azhure smiled, and lowered her eyes a little.

“But,” DragonStar continued softly, relentlessly, “I think that Zenith needs you as a friend far more than I. There are many things that can be saved from this disaster, Azhure, and I do hope that Zenith will be among them.”

Azhure’s eyes jerked back to DragonStar’s face. “And I haven’t even seen her since I came to Sanctuary!”

“I did not know that,” DragonStar said, “but I am not surprised by it.”

And then he turned and walked out the door without another word, leaving his mother staring at his back and with a hand to her mouth in horrified mortification.

Axis was waiting for DragonStar in a small and somewhat unadorned chamber, so plain that DragonStar thought it almost out of character for Sanctuary. Perhaps Axis had spent hours here when he’d first arrived, throwing out all the comforts and fripperies and creating an environment austere enough for any retired war captain to feel at home in.

Axis had never been happy or content away from war, DragonStar thought, and wondered for the first time how frustrating life must have been for Axis once Gorgrael had been disposed of and Tencendorian life was relatively peaceful. No wonder he’d handed over power to Caelum: the endless Councils spent debating the finer details of trading negotiations must have bored his father witless.

Had it been any more challenging being a god? DragonStar wondered.

Axis was seated at a wooden table, or, rather, he was leaning back in a plain wooden chair, his legs crossed and resting on the tabletop, his arms folded across his chest.

On the table surface before him sat a jug of beer, two mugs, and a cloth-wrapped parcel. At the end of the table directly down from Axis sat an empty, waiting chair.

DragonStar paused in the doorway, nodded as an acknowledgment of Axis’ presence, then strolled across to the table, pulled out the chair and sat down. “So tell me, Axis, how am I being greeted? As a drinking companion? Comrade-in-arms?” He paused very slightly. “Long-lost son?”

Another, slightly longer pause, and the ghost of a grin about his lips. “If the prodigal son, then should I expect poison in the beer? A knife thrown from a darkened corner by a faithful lieutenant?”

Axis stared at DragonStar for a heartbeat or two, his face expressionless, then he leaned forward, poured out the two mugs of beer, and slid one down the table. “There is no poison in the beer, nor knife waiting in the corner.”

“Ah.” DragonStar caught the mug just before it slid off the edge of the table, and raised it to his mouth, swallowing a mouthful of the beer. “Then I am not here as long-lost son.”

“I am here only because both Azhure and Caelum asked it of me.”

DragonStar’s face lost its humorous edge. “I have no reason to stay here, Axis,” he snapped. “I could just take that,” he nodded at the parcel, “and leave. I have no use for faded stars!”

To his absolute surprise, Axis burst into laughter. “And nothing could have convinced me more of your fathering than that speech, Drago! Ah, sorry, I should call you by your birth name, should I not?”

“I should always have been called by my birth name,” DragonStar said. “As was my right.”

“My, my,” Axis said softly, “you have my humour and you have my pride.” His voice tightened. “I have also heard it rumoured about this fabulous crystal place they call Sanctuary that you have Faraday as well.”

With a jolt of surprise DragonStar realised that, if nothing else, Axis was treating him as an equal. This was man to man, and it was not about Caelum or who was or who was not StarSon, but about the passing over of the baton of legend.

And Axis didn’t want to let it go.

DragonStar took a deep breath. Axis had never felt threatened by fumble-fingered Caelum, but he now felt intimidated by DragonStar’s surety of grip. The baton was slipping away from Axis’ grasp … had slipped.

What if DragonStar had always been the point and the meaning of the high adventure of Axis’ battle with Borneheld and Gorgrael? What if Axis had only ever been the pawn, and DragonStar the true champion?

If Axis had not been the true champion, then nothing would demonstrate this more in his eyes than the fact that Faraday had gravitated to DragonStar. Faraday’s preferences in love would demonstrate who was the pawn, and who the king.

“Faraday chooses to walk alone,” DragonStar said, and, just as Axis visibly relaxed, continued, “although I have let her know well enough that I would enjoy her warmth and company by my side.”

Axis paused in the act of drinking some beer, stared coldly at DragonStar over the rim of his mug, then set it back on the table.

“Caelum is dead,” he said. “I have lost my son and I am in mourning. Forgive me if I do not fawn at your feet.” He stared at DragonStar. You sent my beloved son to his death, and now you say you want to take the woman who was my lover.

DragonStar half-grimaced, then turned it into a small smile. “I do not think you want another son, do you, Axis? But it would be better for you and I, and for Azhure, and for every one of the living creatures left in Sanctuary, if we could be friends.”

Axis dropped his eyes, and turned his half-empty mug around slowly between his hands. Surprisingly, his overwhelming emotion was one of relief. DragonStar had just presented them both with the perfect solution. Axis knew he could never think of this man across the table as his son — too much love had been denied, and too much hatred had been passed between them for it ever to be possible for them to embrace as father and son. But “friend”? Axis suddenly realised how much he had missed having a friend … how much he had missing relying on and loving Belial.

Axis knew he would be catastrophically jealous if a son proved more powerful than he, but, strangely, he knew he could accept it if a friend was.

An aeon seemed to pass as Axis thought. A friend. DragonStar a friend?

Something dark and horrid shifted within Axis — jealousy, resentment, bitterness — and then shifted again, and, stunningly, slid into oblivion.

He needed a friend. Badly. The thought brought such profound relief that Axis realised he had tears in his eyes.

He blinked them away and raised his gaze back to DragonStar. “How did you realise how much I needed a friend?”

A corner of DragonStar’s mouth twitched. “I have learned a great deal of wisdom since I demanded of you that you set Caelum aside and make me StarSon instead.”

Axis almost smiled, and then felt amazement that he could smile at this memory. “You were a precocious shitty bastard of an infant.”

“Well … technically ‘bastard’ I was not, but everything else you say is true enough. Axis, whatever else has happened between us, and whatever else I have said to you and thought about you and hated you for, I do thank you for setting me on the path of adversity, for without it I would have been another Gorgrael, or another Qeteb. Do you remember what you told me in Sigholt, that first time you set eyes on me?”

“I said that I would not welcome you into the House of Stars until you had learned both humility and compassion.” Axis paused, considering DragonStar carefully. “And sitting across from me now I can see a man whose face is lined, not with hate and bitterness as once it was, but with humility and compassion.

“DragonStar —” Axis shook his head slightly, “how strange it seems to call you that — I think the time has finally arrived to welcome you into the House of Stars.”

DragonStar paused before replying, allowing himself time to cope with the emotion flowing through him. How many hours had he spent lost in useless bitterness as a youth and man, longing for this moment, yet refusing to admit the longing?

“I would be honoured if you would accept me in, Axis,” DragonStar said, “but as your friend before anything else.” Caelum had already welcomed DragonStar into the family House. The fact that Axis now wished to do the same meant that the final bridge between DragonStar and his birth family would finally be repaired.

Tencendor could not be rebuilt without it.

Axis stood, and as he did so the door to the chamber opened and Azhure walked in.

DragonStar rose, staring at her. He wondered if it was her womanly instinct that allowed her to walk into the chamber at precisely the right moment, or just her attentive ear at the keyhole. She had changed from the ordinary day gown she’d been wearing when she’d fetched him to this chamber, and now wore a robe of purest black that was relieved only by a pattern of silvery stars about its hem. Her raven hair tumbled down her back to be lost in the folds of her skirt, and her blue eyes danced with love and, possibly, even a little of her lost magic.

DragonStar stared, then collected himself and half-bowed in her direction, acknowledging her as mother, woman and witch.

Axis smiled and held out his hand to Azhure, then held out his other hand for DragonStar. “It seems, my beloved,” he said to Azhure, “that we have a new companion for our faded constellation.”

She laughed, then embraced them both. “I welcome us all back into the House of Stars,” she said.

Chapter 4 WolfStar

WolfStar rolled over on his back and screamed. Agony knifed through his belly, then ran down his legs in rivulets of liquid horror. He jerked his knees to his chest and hugged them, now gasping for breath, and trying to ride out the successive waves of pain that coursed through him.

Raspu’s poison, he supposed, or Mot’s, or Barzula’s, pumped into him during successive rapes.

“Ahhh,” he groaned, and rolled over, weeping with the pain and the loss and the overwhelming humiliation. Humiliation, not so much from the demonic rapes he’d been forced to endure, although that was part of it, but from the realisation that everything he’d done, and everything he’d thought himself master of during the past few thousand years had been a lie. He’d been a tool and a pawn as much as had the sweatiest and stupidest peasant and now he’d been disposed of as easily.

The Maze — well taught by the Star Dance — was the hardest and cruellest master of all.

WolfStar — Enchanter-Talon, feared by every Icarii in existence.

WolfStar — crazed murderer, loathed by scores of generations of Icarii.

WolfStar — Dark Man, Dear Man, friend and ally of Gorgrael the Destroyer.

WolfStar — lover and ultimate destroyer of Niah.

WolfStar — manipulator of the entire world and all who lived within it.

WolfStar — utter, utter Fool.

A rat ran over his right foot, scratching deeply into his flesh as it went, but WolfStar paid it no heed. Over the past hours (days? weeks? he did not know) countless creatures had scrambled over him, trampled him, urinated on him, nibbled, bit and tasted him, and yet none had done him the kindness of killing him.

All WolfStar wanted was to die … to escape the utter humiliation his existence had become. But no thing or one would grant him death in this world of death made incarnate — this damned, cursed Maze. Bleakness swarmed constantly over him, and madness probed intermittently at his mind: the hours when the Demons raged drove him to the brink of insanity, but never (oh please, stars, let the horror tip me over!), never beyond into the oblivion of total insanity.

Why? Why couldn’t he become one of these mindless creatures that swarmed incoherently and incontinently through the Maze? All WolfStar wanted was to become mindless, because then he would feel no pain.

WolfStar’s fingers scrabbled over his chest, feeling again the clotting blood of Caelum. He gagged, sickened by the feel, as also by the damned persistence of the blood.

He couldn’t wipe it off, it wouldn’t go away. It wouldn’t even dry to a scab that he could scrape off.

WolfStar was marked by Caelum’s blood, and he wondered if that was what protected him.

What had happened to the boy? Why had he walked onto the point of Qeteb’s blade?

WolfStar had turned the horrific moments of Caelum’s death over and over in his mind, and yet he still could not understand them. What had gone so wrong? Why hadn’t Caelum fought back?

Or, at the least, why hadn’t he made an effort to escape? WolfStar could crawl no more. He propped himself up against a wall, holding his belly with one hand, dragging air into his lungs.

Suddenly Caelum walked about the corner and came directly towards him.

He had a beatific smile on his face.

“Caelum StarSon!” Qeteb screamed, and stood in his stirrups and raised his sword.

Caelum, now directly before WolfStar, turned and stared at the horror approaching, stared at the rearing, plunging creature above him, and at the Demon screaming on its back.

“Oh, how I love you,” he said.

“No!” Qeteb shrieked, driven beyond the realms of anger, not only by Caelum’s words, but also by the serene expression on his face.

The Demon drove down his sword.

WolfStar could not believe it. As the sword plunged downwards, Caelum held out his hand and seized the blade. It made not a whit of difference.

The sword sliced through Caelum’s hand and plunged into his chest, driving Caelum back against WolfStar, who grunted with shock.

Qeteb leaned his entire weight down on the sword, twisting it as deep as he could go, feeling bone and muscle and cartilage tear and rip, seeing the bright blood bubble from the StarSon’s mouth.

What had the boy been doing, wandering through the Maze with a beatific smile on his face while all the Demons of Hell rode at his heels?

“There had been magic worked there,” WolfStar whispered, inching his way further down whatever dead-end of the Maze he’d chosen this time. “An enchantment … Caelum was caught in enchantment… but whose? Whose?”

Suddenly WolfStar was angry, and it chased away all his bleakness and humiliation. Someone — not the Demons — had worked an enchantment on Caelum … Who had control of enchantment in this Star Danceless world?

And if someone did have control of enchantment, how could WolfStar work that to his own will?

“Who are you?” he whispered, now dragging himself along with one hand while the other held his ruined belly in vaguely one piece. “Who are you?”

He repeated the sentence, over and over, making of it a mantra. He repeated it for hour after hour, dragging himself through the Maze, ignoring the countless creatures — once-animal and once-human or Icarii — that flowed about and over him. He continued to repeat it through the Demonic hour of dusk that probed at his mind, and he continued to repeat it through the night until it almost drove him mad.

At dawn, as the light broke over the Maze, WolfStar realised something.

He was not mad. And he was not dead. Neither madness nor Demon had touched him, or even taken any interest in him. He had survived, for whatever reason and for whatever purpose.

And he had to have a purpose, because without a purpose he was nothing but a pawn.

A glow of light filtered down through the stone walls of the Maze, lighting the flagstones before him.

A million symbols flowed over and through the stone. The Maze, taunting him.

“Damn you! Damn you!” WolfStar whispered, furious that the Star Dance and the Maze had manipulated him for so many millennia. From the heights of power, the glory days of thinking that all Tencendor danced to his manipulations, WolfStar had fallen to being nothing but a useless puppet crawling through the stone corridors of the Maze.

A Talon-Enchanter with no more power than an ant.

“No!”

No, he could not bear that. There was power out there somewhere — he could feel it! — and that meant there was power available for the taking.

And he would take it. No-one would laugh at WolfStar!

“Who are you?” he whispered over and over as he crawled hand-over-hand across the rough stone. “Who are you?”

As crazed birds tumbled through the sky above his head, so plans and intrigues tumbled through WolfStar’s mind.

There was power out there, and he would find a way to control it.

“Who are you? Who are you?”

WolfStar crawled for hours, lost in his own thoughts, his anger giving him strength when he should have collapsed, until eventually he thought he heard something whisper. He raised his head, and stared.

Then he laughed, knowing hope for the first time in many days.

Ten paces ahead rose the gateway into the wasteland.

Chapter 5 Of Sundry Enemies

“This land is not enough,” Sheol whispered. “We need the entire world and all its souls to feed from. When can we take it all?” She was lying sprawled across the floor of the mausoleum, writhing in an agony of need and desire. Her last feeding hour had been good, but not good enough.

There were other souls out there, and she wanted them. She bared her teeth, and snarled.

Qeteb leaned down and grabbed her by the hair, hauling her to her feet. Sheol screamed, and then roared, her shape flowing from humanoid to dog and back to humanoid again.

StarLaughter, sitting with her back against one of the black columns, turned her face aside in a disgust she did not even bother to disguise. Nothing had gone well for her since her son had attained his full potential.

Qeteb laughed, and dropped Sheol.

The female Demon crawled a few paces away and then rose to her feet, smoothing down the pastel-coloured gown she’d chosen to assume and rearranging her facial features in an expression that came close to obeisance.

“Great Father,” she said, and dipped her head.

Qeteb grunted. For the moment he was prepared to put up with Sheol’s impatience — had she not fought through a hundred thousand years to resurrect him? — but he wasn’t sure if his current good nature would last much longer than dusk this evening.

There was going to be an irritating delay before they could consume the souls of the entire planet, and Qeteb did not like to be made to wait for anything, let alone total domination.

“For the moment we are confined to this wasteland,” he said. “We must be, until we have finally disposed of the … StarSon.”

The Enemy Reborn.

It had rattled all of the Demons more than they were prepared to admit out loud each to the other. The damned, damned Enemy Reborn.

They thought they had been chasing the shadows cast by the fleet of the Ark, but instead the shadow had been chasing them.

“Once the StarSon is dead — once and for all — then the eating will be beyond compare,” Raspu whispered. He was standing with Mot and Barzula behind the stone tomb that sat in the centre of the mausoleum. The three Demons were leaning with their elbows on the stone’s flat surface and their chins resting in their hands, staring at Qeteb as he paced to and fro.

Behind them, almost lost in the gloom of the columned recesses of the mausoleum, lay the Niah-woman, limbs akimbo, blank-eyed head propped up at an uncomfortable yet unheeded angle against a cold marble wall. Her white skin was blemished with small lesions. Qeteb had amused himself well with her. His new body had needs to be sated, and her soulless one was useful only for the services it could provide — but his black metal armour had not provided the kindest of caresses.

No-one among them cared, least of all Qeteb. As far as he was concerned, the Niah-body needed to last only as long as it could provide a new flesh and blood form for Rox’s lost soul. Qeteb was more than irritated with Rox’s foolhardy attempt to brave the bridge at Sigholt, and had considered leaving him to float disembodied for eternity … but this was a land and a time of resurrection, and Rox would be more useful in bodily form than useless spirit.

They would need to meet the StarSon united. This time, Qeteb would let nothing stand in the way of a total victory over the Enemy.

“What do you mean?” StarLaughter said, moving forward. “I thought you rammed your sword through the StarSon in the Maze. What’s this hold-up?”

Qeteb’s impatience for power was nothing compared to StarLaughter’s.

Qeteb turned slowly to look at the woman. He would have liked to destroy her, but at the moment he was loath to kill anything that might provide information, or might prove useful. If there was anything Qeteb had learned over the past hundred thousand years of imprisonment, it was a modicum of prudence.

“He was a false StarSon only,” he said, allowing his voice to flow through his closed visor like honeyed chocolate.

It had its effect. StarLaughter visibly relaxed.

“A decoy,” Qeteb continued. “The false StarSon bought the true StarSon time … for what I am not yet sure.”

“Time,” Sheol said, “to build a hidey-hole for the majority of souls of this land. He even took the insects with him!”

A soul was a soul was a soul, and each soul fed the Demons as much as the next one. The millions of insects that Drago’s witches had squirreled away into Sanctuary had cost the Demons as dearly as the vast numbers of people who’d managed to escape the final ravagement.

Qeteb nodded slowly, letting his gaze drift away from StarLaughter and around the mausoleum. This dark place was all very well, but Qeteb had had enough of confinement. Soon would be the time to go exploring.

“We will find his hiding place,” the Midday Demon said, “and we will destroy it. We will feed on all it has to offer. And then we — I — will meet this StarSon, and teach him that which he refuses to learn.”

Underneath his visor Qeteb’s lips stretched in a humourless smile. The StarSon might be the Enemy Reborn, but he had been reborn with all the Enemy’s mistakes tucked into whatever magic he thought he commanded. But he, Qeteb, had spent his millennia of confinement learning … and learning from the Enemy’s errors. The Enemy Reborn, this uselessly tinselled StarSon, was bred to make the same mistakes as his forebears … but this time Qeteb was ready, and this time the Enemy Reborn’s mistakes would kill him.

Qeteb felt a sensual thrill course through his being. He had waited a hundred thousand years for rebirth, while the Enemy had waited a hundred thousand years for death.

This time he would triumph. Qeteb knew it for truth.

“And what of that?” Barzula said, indicating the wooden bowl that lay at the foot of the tomb. “It is magic … but what kind? And is it dangerous?”

Qeteb walked over and picked up the bowl, stroking the wood. “StarLaughter?”

She sighed, and joined him. She rested her hand on the wood. “It is of Avar craftsmanship. Pointless beauty.”

“I disagree,” Qeteb said, and brushed her hand aside. “But then, I do not blame you for it, for you are merely woman, and a mortal who has survived on the back of my brothers’ and sister’s power and their tolerance.”

StarLaughter’s entire body went rigid, and her eyes hard.

Qeteb either did not notice or did not care. “This bowl has a secret,” he said. “A very big and probably very important secret.”

His hand tightened about the bowl, and a tiny crack ran halfway along the rim.

“I do not like objects that are secretive!” Qeteb said, and his hand tightened fractionally more.

The crack widened.

“Ah!” Qeteb loosened his grip. He hefted the bowl lightly, and then in a smooth action threw the bowl spinning into the darkness of the domed ceiling.

It disappeared.

“The one thing I like about secrets,” Qeteb observed, his visored face once more looking at StarLaughter, “is that they keep indefinitely. The bowl is mine, and eventually its secret will be mine.”

StarLaughter held the Demon’s stare, difficult as that was with no observable eyes to be found behind the latticed metalwork of the visor. “Your brothers and sister,” she said evenly, “promised me power in return for all my aid.”

To one side Sheol sniggered.

“Your aid,” Qeteb said. “How amusing that you think you provided —”

“I provided you with life!” StarLaughter yelled, balling her fists at her side and taking a step closer to Qeteb.

Barzula and Mot glanced at each other, then back to StarLaughter, and then they smiled slowly.

You did not provide me with life!

The thought boomed about the mausoleum, and although no spoken word sounded, all heard Qeteb’s words.

“You are my son!” StarLaughter screamed, unthinking anger giving her voice unusual strength. “I provided you with life, I bore you through adversity, I gave birth to you while I drifted among the stars. I loved and nurtured you through three thousand —”

“You provided the scrap of flesh which I chose to inhabit!” Qeteb stepped forward, and StarLaughter finally had the sense to retreat slightly. “My existence needs no ‘mother’. You were merely the cow that delivered the meat for my needs. You are the one who should be grateful… and yet you have the stupidity to demand it of me! I do not know,” he continued, growling now, and stepping forward once more, “why you still live or why your mind is still your own.”

StarLaughter paled, although her eyes remained bright with fury. “Because no-one else in this gloomy tower knows their way around this land and its secrets like I do!” she said.“You deserve another hundred thousand years trapped in some Enemy’s gaol if now you destroy the one Tencendorian remaining at your side, and with a reasonably intact mind!”

“You would be better crawling mad at my feet!”

“You wouldn’t dare!” StarLaughter countered, squaring her shoulders in defiance.

Qeteb stared at her, then raised a fist and struck StarLaughter across her face so hard he flung her sprawling several paces away across the floor.

“Bitch-sow,” he said, his voice tight with frustration. “One day I will dare, and I will leave just enough of your mind intact to know exactly what I will do to you.”

StarLaughter raised herself on an elbow and stared at him. Her left cheek was livid, blood running freely down her chin and neck. “If there is one being in existence you should never alienate,” she whispered, “it is your mother.”

Qeteb took one heavy step towards her. He laughed, whispery and harsh. “When I inhabited this flesh, StarLaughter, I also gained its memories. Do you want to know what I can remember of your son, StarLaughter? Do you? I remember that he despised you —”

“No! My son adored —”

“— he regarded you with contempt, as he knew all the Icarii in Talon Spike felt nothing but contempt towards you —”

“No!”

“You silly, vacuous woman. You thought you were the most powerful Icarii in the land, didn’t you? You thought that all power could be yours, didn’t you? And yet you were nothing but an embarrassment to the Icarii nation, someone to be greeted with silent sneers at every entrance into a room, and with laughter at your departure. The Icarii loathed you, your husband was revolted by you, and your son could not wait to escape your body. He hated you, StarLaughter. He was sickened by you, and he escaped into death rather than spend an eternity amid the stars with you.”

StarLaughter remained silent, rigid with shock. She stared at Qeteb.

Qeteb laughed again. “Queen of Heaven?” he said. “Never!” Then he spat a glob of phlegm through his metal visor into her face.

She gasped, recoiling.

“That was from your son, bitch, not from me.” And Qeteb turned and strode away.

StarLaughter lay on the cold, cold floor of the mausoleum.

Lies! Lies! He spoke lies! Her son had adored her, loved her.

From the moment he had come to awareness in her womb, her son had been the only one who had understood her power, and who had understood that she was destined for greatness and was justified in choosing whatever path she had to in order to grasp her destiny.

Qeteb spoke lies!

Didn’t he?

StarLaughter lay on the floor of the mausoleum and hated. More, she lusted for revenge. Qeteb could not speak such lies and blacken her son’s memory —

Gods! Was her son trapped under that mountain of metal and odious flesh, screaming for her to get him out?

— and think that she would do nothing about it.

StarLaughter bared her teeth, and made a small sound deep in her throat that was half curse, half growl.

Her hands clawed on the floor, her nails scratching at its surface.

She lay there and hated, and she lay there and lusted for revenge.

StarLaughter was very, very good at nourishing both hatred and revenge. She had had many thousands of years of practice at both.

I nurtured my son, she thought, her entire body rigid with the intensity of her animosity. I nurtured him and kept him and held and loved him through such extremes of pain and despair that you — a Demon — cannot imagine. I offered him my breast, and he took it.

I loved him, and yet you stole him from me, Qeteb, and then sullied his memory with lies.

“My son hated me?” StarLaughter whispered, her hands still clawing slowly at the floor. “He didn’t hate me, he adored me … every Icarii adored me! No-one laughed at me. No-one!”

She lifted her head slightly and stared at Qeteb, now on the far side of the mausoleum whispering with his fellow nightmares.

You are the simpleton, Qeteb, if you think you can deny both my son and myself our destinies.

At StarLaughter’s thought, Qeteb turned slowly and regarded her.

StarLaughter did not move, nor drop her eyes, nor even disguise the hatred and resentment in them.

After a moment Qeteb turned his back to her again.

Now you have one more enemy, StarLaughter thought, and began to mop at the blood on her face and neck with a corner of her much-bloodied robe.

Her son hadn’t hated her… had he?

StarLaughter paused in her attempts to clean her face, and her entire face trembled as doubt overran her mind.

Had he?

Chapter 6 The Enchanted Song Book

“Tell us of Caelum,” Axis said, as they sat down.

“And tell us of yourself. We have heard only garbled snippets, and we would know the truth.”

Where to start? DragonStar thought. “You realise,” he finally said, “the depth of manipulation that has bound our family?”

Axis nodded. “I thought my task had been to defeat Gorgrael and unite Tencendor, but in reality, my task, as Azhure’s, was to create the circumstances that would create the StarSon.”

DragonStar’s mouth quirked. “Yes. Even WolfStar had been manipulated in order that Azhure be created and Axis be trained, so that you might the better perform your task in creating…”

“You,” Azhure said very softly. She did not look at either her husband or her son.

“The manipulation,” DragonStar said, “extends beyond our family. It involves this entire land and its peoples, and stretches beyond that… back to the world of the Enemy. We are but the result of tens and tens of thousands of years of manipulation. Even longer, perhaps.”

“By what?” Axis demanded. “By who?”

“By the Star Dance,” DragonStar said. “Or whatever it represents.”

“The Star Dance!” Axis said, and he spoke the words as a curse, as a hated thing. “The time was when I loved that beyond anything, save Azhure.”

“It may be,” DragonStar said, “that the Star Dance has been leading to this point, to us, for millions of years. Chasing the Demons through time and space, and being chased by them.”

“We are the ultimate of millions of years of … manipulation?” Azhure said, and then laughed merrily, shaking out her hair. “Could the Star Dance have not made us less flawed? An Axis less arrogant and cruel? A DragonStar less resentful and ambitious? And I? I less determined to know my own power, and more willing to tend to my own family.”

“Who knows,” DragonStar said. “Our flaws may yet save us.” And he smiled, as if he had made a joke to himself. “Ah, but you asked of Caelum and of myself. We both grew up amid lies — not of your doing, or even of ours, but lies bound about us by the Star Dance, via the Maze. These lies dictated our action, driving me into such overweening ambition I could contemplate the murder of Caelum, and making Caelum …”

“A weak ruler,” Azhure finished for him, “and a murderer also, perhaps?”

Ye gods, DragonStar thought weakly, what should I say to that? Yes, mother. Caelum murdered our sister and your daughter. Do you want me to say that out loud, Azhure?

“Perhaps,” he answered, and Azhure nodded and turned aside her head for a second time.

“A murderer?” Axis said. “What do you mean?”

“He means,” Azhure said, “that we all have the blood of others on our hands, beloved.”

And Axis nodded, accepting what she said without truly understanding what she spoke of.

“Caelum’s true role was as a false StarSon,” DragonStar said. “A decoy. I needed time to grow, to learn, and to allow Qeteb the confidence to destroy Tencendor … which he would not have done if he’d known the StarSon still lived.”

Briefly, DragonStar told his parents of the hidden Acharite magic that could be touched only with the passage through death.

Axis stared at Azhure, his eyes excited, then looked back at DragonStar. “But that means that I, too, can use the Acharite power!”

DragonStar shook his head. “I’m sorry, Axis, but —” “I’ve been to death’s gate, even though the haggard old crone wouldn’t let me through. Why can’t I use my Acharite blood?”

“Because of your overpowering use of the Star Dance.” DragonStar paused, feeling his father’s frustration. “And you have been a Star God. Your Icarii-bred magic has killed whatever potential Acharite magic you had. When you proclaimed yourself StarMan, you also literally killed your Acharite magic in favour of the Star Dance. I’m sorry, Axis.”

Axis subsided, bitterly disappointed. For a moment, just a moment, he’d thought…

Axis shook his head, putting his disappointment aside. “What else do you have to tell us?”

DragonStar hesitated, still sympathising with Axis. Then he continued, telling them of Urbeth, the original Enchantress and mother of races, and Azhure gasped and fingered the now-dulled Circle of Stars on her finger. He told them everything he could of the time he’d spent with the Demons, and what had happened to him once he’d returned to Tencendor. He told them of the manner of Caelum’s death.

And, finally, he told them of the Infinite Field of Flowers, and what awaited Tencendor once — if — the Demons had been destroyed.

Axis and Azhure listened in silence, their faces growing more and more pallid, their eyes progressively rounder, as DragonStar spoke.

“And Caelum,” Azhure said as DragonStar finally finished. “Caelum?”

“Is in the Field of Flowers,” DragonStar said. “Be sure of that.”

“Can we see him? You said that Zared and Theod saw the Field of Flowers. Can we —”

“No,” DragonStar said. “Wait, let me explain. You cannot see it yet, but if all goes well, then, well, we will all experience the Field of Flowers. But I cannot take you from Sanctuary into the field. We need to go from Tencendor itself. There is only one gateway.”

“But Spiredore,” Azhure said. “Draw your door of light, take us into Spiredore, and thence into —”

“Azhure,” DragonStar said, and leaned across the table to take her hand. “Qeteb has risen, and the Demons now control the wasteland that once was Tencendor. I do not know if Spiredore is safe any more. It probably is, but ‘probably’ is not good enough to needlessly risk your lives. I will go first, and then one or two of the other five who have been through death and can resist the Demons, for a while at least. Wait. Please.”

Azhure nodded, and dropped her eyes. They fell on the cloth-wrapped parcel that still sat on the table.

“Caelum asked us to give this to you,” Azhure said, “if he… if he died.”

She pushed the parcel across the table towards DragonStar.

The Enchanted Song Book. DragonStar slowly unwrapped it.

“We deciphered the melodies, and then the dances,” Axis said. “They were … unusual.”

“They are the key to the destruction of the Demons,” DragonStar said.

Axis stared at his son, remembering the dawn when Caelum had tried one of the dances atop Star Finger. “DragonStar … DragonStar, be careful with them. Caelum —”

“Caelum was not the StarSon —” DragonStar began, but Axis interrupted angrily.

“You have inherited all the damn SunSoar arrogance in its full blindness!” he said. “Listen to me, damn you!”

DragonStar dropped his eyes. “I am sorry, Axis. What happened?”

Slowly Axis described the dance’s affect on Caelum. “It was as if he was consumed by hatred and violence. The dance did that to him … it infused him with whatever malevolence it had been made from.”

“Qeteb was originally trapped by mirrors that reflected his own malevolence back on him,” DragonStar said slowly. “He would never let that happen to him again. The dances, the melodies the book contain,” his fingers tapped the cover thoughtfully, “will have the same action as the mirrors originally did.”

“Maybe,” Axis said, “and maybe not.”

Chapter 7 A Wander Through, and Into, Sanctuary

Faraday, Zenith and StarDrifter were wandering slowly along one of the paths Sanctuary had provided for the comfort, pleasure and exercise of all who sheltered within its confines. It was, StarDrifter thought — and with a distinct, but not entirely successful, effort to avoid couching the thought in unpleasant overtones — just like it was on the Island of Mist and Memory. Me, Zenith … and Faraday’s constant presence between us. Even her physical presence, for Faraday literally separated Zenith and StarDrifter as they walked abreast down the wide path.

Not even Sanctuary works in my favour, StarDrifter thought, for if the path were just the slightest bit narrower, then mayhap Faraday would have to walk behind Zenith and myself, and I could have the contentment of the odd fleeting touch as my elbow brushed the fabric of Zenith’s lavender gown.

And mayhap not, for StarDrifter was sure if the path were narrow, he would be the one left to wander lost behind whilst Faraday and Zenith linked arms — as they had now — and chatted happily without him.

Aye, he thought, this is just like the Island of Mist and Memory, for Zenith feels more comfortable with me when someone else is present. It is as if she only feels at ease relating to me through someone else.

She only laughs freely when there is someone else present to protect the space between her and I.

She only smiles at me when someone else is there to act as a filter for her joy.

She only tilts eyes of love in my direction when there is someone else her glance can bounce off first.

StarDrifter was not feeling happy about the situation at all, but there was nothing he could, or wanted, to do. Zenith had to take her own time in learning to accept her love for him, or there would be no future time for the two of them at all.

The shared strolls through Sanctuary’s soft daytime were bad, but there was nothing as bad as the long velvet nights adrift in his lonely bed knowing that Zenith had been born to share it, but knowing also she refused to do so … because…

… because she found his touch repulsive! StarDrifter shivered in utter panic. How could he ever shift from grandfather to lover in her mind?

“StarDrifter?” Zenith said, and StarDrifter jumped.

“Hmmm?”

“Look, we approach Sanctuary’s answer to the Avarinheim. I wonder which Avar Clan we will encounter first? The JeppelSand Clan were here yesterday …”

StarDrifter truly didn’t care, but he tried his best to summon an outward semblance of interest. They were within a hundred paces of a dark forest, and yet StarDrifter knew that on entering that forested darkness, they would find only space and light and music, just like the original Avarinheim.

And no doubt some Clan that both Faraday and Zenith would insist on sitting down with and sharing some in-depth conversation about the preparation of malfari bread, or some such.

Women! Didn’t they understand that there were other pleasures to pursue?

But now Faraday was pulling back a little.

“I don’t know,” she said, and both StarDrifter and Zenith halted and regarded her.

“Faraday,” Zenith said, and reached out her hand to hold one of Faraday’s. “Isfrael is generally deep within the forest, and even if he isn’t, he is hardly likely to linger about and disturb our morning.”

Faraday did not answer, staring at the forest and chewing her lip. She loved chatting to the Avar, and they just as obviously enjoyed her visits, but the occasional meeting with Isfrael, even the glimmer of his hostile eyes behind the shadowy overhang of a branch, tended to send chills trampling up and down her spine.

“Perhaps you and StarDrifter should go on,” she said, and StarDrifter’s entire countenance brightened.

“Perhaps that’s best!” he said, and took Zenith’s hand to lead her away. “Zenith, Faraday obviously doesn’t want to —”

“Faraday! Zenith! StarDrifter!”

They all turned and looked back down the path.

Azhure was walking quickly — and yet with such lithe grace that StarDrifter’s breath caught slightly in his throat — towards them.

She smiled with exquisite loveliness as she reached them, and now StarDrifter’s breath caught completely, not so much for Azhure’s beauty, as alluring as it was, but for the resemblance to Zenith’s smile on her face.

“Faraday,” Azhure said softly. “Drago … DragonStar has returned.”

Faraday’s face paled completely, and her green eyes widened. She let go of Zenith’s hand, and looked past Azhure towards the distant palace complex. An expression akin to panic flooded her face.

“Go to him,” Azhure said softly. “Axis and I have talked to him, and now, perchance it is your time.”

Faraday’s eyes focused back on Azhure. “You talked …?”

“Faraday, go to him.”

Faraday looked once more at the distant palace. She and Azhure had talked at length in the days that Drago (why did Azhure call him DragonStar?) had remained above in Tencendor. At first, Faraday had wanted to talk Azhure into accepting her son back into her love, but had found it not necessary. Azhure had been won over the instant Drago had looked at her with unhindered love in that dank basement chamber in Star Finger. Instead, Faraday had found herself being lectured by Azhure on accepting her own love for Drago.

She and the Mother must somehow be in cohorts, Faraday had thought at the time.

But she had listened to Azhure, nevertheless, as she had listened to the Mother.

“I must get Katie,” Faraday said. “She’s with Leagh and Gwendylyr in —”

“No,” Azhure said. “Katie can wait.”

“I —”

“Go,” Azhure said, and took Faraday’s hand and pulled her very slightly down the path. “Go.” Faraday nodded, and went.

Isfrael watched his mother walk down the path with cold eyes, and even colder thoughts.

The Avar tolerated — nay, welcomed — his presence among them, but Isfrael was ever aware that they regarded him as one of them, not as one above them.

That place they now reserved for Faraday. Their Tree Friend was once more among them. She had returned in the hour of direst danger, and led them to safety.

Better his mother had stayed in legend, Isfrael thought, as he had thought a thousand times since he’d entered this pitiful underground dungeon they called “Sanctuary”.

Better … better if she returned to legend.

Aye, far better.

Isfrael turned his back and walked into darkness.

Faraday smoothed the white linen of her gown nervously, tweaking out a fold that had become caught under the Mother’s rainbow sash still wound about her waist.

For a moment she rested her hand on the faint outline of the twisted arrow and sapling that rested in the folds of the sash.

Then she raised her eyes and looked at the closed door before her. Here Azhure said Drago was waiting.

Here, the chamber he had taken as his own. Right next door to Axis and Azhure’s chamber, which Faraday could not help wonder was a deliberate action on his part.

Choose between us, Faraday. My father, or me.

Which door, Faraday?

There was nothing in Faraday’s mind of Demons, or how to restore Tencendor to its glory, or even of Katie. All Faraday could think of was what she should say to this man.

How she could gracefully tell him that, after all her hesitation, all her fright and denial, all her determination not to lay open her body and soul to the betrayal it had suffered with Axis and Gorgrael, she was prepared to do it all over again if it meant loving, and being loved.

The Mother had been right. Her life would be nothing if she refused to dare to love.

Faraday glanced at Axis’ door several paces away.

There was no question of the choice, and maybe Drago knew that, but it would have amused him to have presented her with the mirage of alternatives.

No, Faraday’s major problem now was how to back down with her pride intact from the position she’d dug herself into.

Having denied the man, and her love for him, for months, how could she now turn around and say she’d been wrong?

What superior smile would wrap his face? What triumph?

“None, Faraday,” said a soft voice behind her, and she whipped about.

Drago … no! DragonStar (and now she could see why Azhure had used that name) was leaning against the wall several paces behind her.

Faraday’s entire existence stilled, save for the painful thudding of her heart.

And save for the painful sensation of her desire crawling out of the very pit of her soul, through her stomach and up her throat to offer itself to this man.

Tears filled her eyes. He was glorious. Somehow, somewhere, in the week or more since she’d last seen him, he’d been re-transformed. Transformed into his true self, the self that Azhure and Axis had tried to hide, the self that the power of the Enemy had been successful in returning.

DragonStar was not handsome, nor even physically imposing. The tired lined face and the violet eyes were the same — and yet radically different. Both face and eyes were transfused with such depth of understanding (Faraday did not think she could call it “power”), and such heights of compassion that she thought she might choke on her emotion.

DragonStar half-smiled, acknowledging her reaction, straightened, hesitated, then brushed past her and opened the door to his chamber. “You wanted to speak to me?”

Faraday’s temper flashed.

“Is that all you have to say?” She turned and followed him into the room. “What happened to you? And Caelum? And Qeteb? And Tencendor? None of us have heard —”

DragonStar laid a hand on her mouth. “Hush, Faraday. First, there are other things that must be said between us.”

She didn’t want to. She wanted to hide in the safety of hearing what had happened above. She wanted to tell him about her encounter with Isfrael. She wanted him to know that the Earth Tree had gone, but that was all right, because in her belt she had —

He slid an arm about her waist and pulled her gently against him. “I missed you.”

“Who are you?” she whispered, somehow terrified of this being what Drago had transformed into.

“The same man,” he said, his eyes travelling slowly over her face, “but deeper.”

“Harder?”

He shook his head. “Softer.” His arm tightened fractionally. “Qeteb —”

“Qeteb can wait. Faraday, talk to me.”

She took a huge breath and closed her eyes momentarily. What had the Mother said? Until you learn to dare, you will never live. Take that risk, Faraday … take that risk.

“I will not betray you, Faraday,” DragonStar whispered, and she realised he was now very, very close. So close that his warmth burnt through the layers of linen between them. “Trust me, trust me…” His voice drifted off and she opened her eyes.

I will never betray you, she heard him whisper in her mind, not for another woman, not for riches or glory, and not for this land.

“I do not require your blood,” he said aloud now, although still in a whisper, “Tencendor does not require your blood.”

And still she had not spoken.

Faraday…

How hateful, she thought, that I have found it so difficult to accept his love. Faraday.

How hateful that I have found it so hard to accept the Sanctuary of his heart. Faraday.

How hard that I have found it so seductive to allow myself to remain the perpetual victim rather than allowing myself to live.

Faraday.

She shifted slightly in his arms, exploring the feel of his body against hers.

DragonStar, she whispered back into his mind. And then she smiled, and laughed a little, and relaxed against him, and then laughed a little more at the smile on his face.

“I have loved you forever,” she said, and those were the easiest words she had ever said in her many existences.

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