“You think,” Qeteb said, “that you will use love to confound me, joy to confuse me, and forgiveness to emasculate me. Well,” he leaned forward, his face red with fury, “none of those things will touch me! I am incapable of being touched by love or joy or forgiveness. They ceased many aeons ago to have any meaning for me!”
“And yet Caelum managed to—”
“Caelum infuriated me because he would not struggle against me. I found that…irritating. His love left me cold.”
Ice spread over the table, covering wood and platter and glassware alike, and DragonStar had to jerk his hand away from his glass to save it from being similarly encased.
“Sheol may have been frightened by it,” Qeteb continued, his voice now a vicious whip, “but your redemption will never, never, never touch me!”
“So why bring me here?” DragonStar said. “Why?”
“To explain the rules of this confrontation. The Star Dance and I have been jousting since the beginning of time. Now it has made you its final weapon. Your problem, DragonStar, is that you’ve only been around some forty years, and you have some catching up to do. Now,” Qeteb leaned forward, “listen up.
“You think that you and I must meet in a final confrontation. Correct?”
DragonStar nodded slowly, his eyes not leaving Qeteb’s face.
“Well, in that you’re right. You also believe that before you and I meet, there must be individual confrontations between your five and my five companions. Right?
DragonStar nodded again, but even more cautiously.
Qeteb beamed, and sat back. “My dear chap, again you are perfectly correct! Well done!
“But,” Qeteb’s entire demeanour darkened, and became triumphantly malevolent, “although you instinctively know the broad outlines of the rules of the game, some of the subtle, legalistic niceties have entirely escaped your attention.
“Did you know, you starry-eyed piece of shit, did you have any realisation, that the confrontation between yours and mine will decide the outcome between you and me?”
DragonStar went cold. He desperately did not want to believe what Qeteb had said, but…
“You can feel the truth of the matter can’t you?” Qeteb said. “Oh! You naive simpleton! You were so damned sure that because you think to represent the forces of righteousness and love and gods know what else, you think you will win!
“Wrong. Five of yours will meet five of mine. There can be no even score. If one of yours fails, you will be weakened, as I would be if one of mine failed. If two of yours fail, you would be seriously weakened, as I would. If three of yours fail, you will fail because the balance will have fallen in my favour. Do you understand?”
DragonStar stared, unable to speak.
Qeteb smiled slowly, and folded his arms across his chest. “You poor boy. You are upset. Well, I am prepared to be magnanimous. After all, me and mine have had far longer to think about it all, to prepare, than your sweet witches…and isn’t one of them pregnant? The poor girl! She must be quaking in her dainty boots! Therefore I will allow your witches the choice of weapons and place—although you and I are more bound by the rules, of course.”
There was a sweeping darkness, and a wind, and the faint cries of the Hunt through the Maze.
“You have lost Rox,” said DragonStar. “Leagh doesn’t have to—”
Qeteb snarled. “Know that Leagh will have to attend!”
The Demon leaned forward again, swarming over the tabletop like a deformed spider. “I’ve had enough of this pretence, DragonStar! I brought you here to make sure you know, beyond any doubt, that you will die, DragonStar. To make sure you know beyond any doubt that you will fail. To make sure that you know beyond any doubt that everything you love and treasure will be swallowed up to live eternity in the dark, writhing masses of my belly. There is no way that your five can triumph over my five. I will hunt you through the Maze, StarSon. And when I do the outcome will be inevitable!”
The four cats leapt screaming into the air, and DragonStar lifted his arms reflexively. As he did so, he felt Qeteb reach dark, clawed fingers into his mind.
DragonStar’s body jerked and sat up.
“DragonStar?” Faraday said.
“No, you bitch,” Qeteb whispered with DragonStar’s voice. “Not your lover at all, but one who will nevertheless eventually love you anyway.”
Faraday, as did everyone else in the room, jerked back in horror.
“DragonStar can do nothing against me,” Qeteb continued, and he twisted DragonStar’s features into a parody of a grin. “He will die, you will all die, and everything you love shall be utterly destroyed.”
Axis’ hand fiddled with his sword, and Qeteb saw, and laughed. “If you kill this body now, then you will still not touch me,” he said. “Nothing can touch me.”
DragonStar’s hand jerked up and touched Faraday’s face.
She scrambled back in horror.
“I can penetrate his mind at will,” Qeteb said. “Take over his body at will. I can do it. Whose voice will issue forth at what time of the day? Whose orders will it mouth? Whose hands, Faraday, will caress your body?”
The Demon laughed, and DragonStar’s body jerked in a violent fit. “I give you back DragonStar,” the Demon said, “for he has some important information for you.”
DragonStar’s body gave one final jerk as Qeteb howled in laughter, and then it slumped back in its chair.
Chapter 22
The Sacred Groves
Isfrael stared at the silver-haired Horned One. “I introduce no abomination into the grove!” he said. “I have every right to be here and—”
The silver-pelt stepped forward and slapped Isfrael’s face so hard the Mage-King stumbled and almost fell.
Isfrael snarled, and swung back at the Horned One, but the creature was too fast for him, and kicked Isfrael squarely in the ribs.
The Mage-King fell to the ground, heaving in breaths in great gasps.
The Horned One kicked him again. “You gave the Demons the enchanted bowl!”
Isfrael rolled away and struggled to his hands and knees. “They already had it, you horned aberration! Faraday, your beloved Tree Friend, gave it to them! I brought it back! We are safe, and—”
“That,” the Horned One said, pointing to the bowl where it had rolled several paces away, “is a copy. A fake. A trick!”
Isfrael stared at him, then shifted his eyes to the bowl. “No. It can’t be.”
He looked back at the Horned One and saw for the first time the tiredness in the creature’s liquid black eyes, the slump of his shoulders, the sagging muscles. The creature was dying.
Isfrael narrowed his eyes. “What’s happening here? Why are you so ill?” He finally struggled upright and looked about him. The trees of the Sacred Grove were as touched by malaise as the Horned One: their leaves were blotched and mouldy, their bark was peeling away in great strips, their roots arched out of the earth as if trying to escape the disease within.
“The bowl is a fake,” the Horned One said again, and lifted his hands in despair. “What are we to do?”
Two women walked slowly out of the tree line. One, the Mother, leaned on the other’s shoulders for support.
Ur walked strong and determined, and her ancient face was lined with anger and resolution.
“My friend?” the Mother said to the Horned One.
“Isfrael has broken through the barriers You built to seal off the Sacred Groves,” the Horned One said.
“Impossible,” the Mother said. “No-one had the power to
—”
“He sought the aid of the Demons to do so,” the Horned One said. “And Isfrael left the enchanted bowl with the Demons. I’m afraid they now know the way along the paths.”
The Mother’s face crumpled, and She pressed a hand to Her mouth to suppress a moan.
“What does this mean?” Ur said.
“It means,” the Mother answered in a tiny voice, “that the Demons will be
able to access the Groves. They have the power and they have the vehicle.”
“Then we will fight!” Ur said, and she half-raised a fist.
The Mother smiled, a small, desperate attempt. “What with, my dear? Everything about the Groves—the soil, the water, the air, the very soul—has been corrupted by the Demons’ influence over Tencendor. We have nothing left to fight with. Nothing.”
“I have my pots,” Ur said, and her fist raised a little higher.
Isfrael gave a harsh bray of laughter, and turned away. Fools! He had managed to secrete himself with fools!
He sank down under a tree, ignoring the constant patter of dead leaves that fell about him. So…the Mother and Her impotent companions are sure the Demons will destroy the Groves? Isfrael thought about it…what else did he have that he could bargain for his life with?
Chapter 23
Niah Reborn
“Well?” said Axis, his voice hard.
“Isfrael has betrayed us,” DragonStar said. “He has given Qeteb some secret that will enable him to—”
“That is not what I asked.”
DragonStar looked up. His parents, Faraday, Gwendylyr and Goldman were all standing about his chair, their faces carefully unreadable.
Only Faraday allowed the barest of emotions to glimmer forth: her eyes were pools of horror…a remembered horror.
“What did I say?” DragonStar said. “Why do you all look at me like that?”
“Who are you?” Goldman asked. “You look like DragonStar, and you sound like DragonStar, but who are you?”
DragonStar frowned. “What…”
“Qeteb spoke through your mouth,” Faraday said softly. Her hands were clutched before her, twisting and writhing as if they, too, might be in the grip of some demonic possession. “He said…he said that he could take possession of your mind at will.”
DragonStar closed his eyes and tipped his head back to rest against the back of the chair. Gods, what had he done? Let his confidence get the better of him! Let his arrogance lead them all into ruin!
And Qeteb could take possession of him at will?
“I cannot believe that,” DragonStar said, opening his eyes and staring at the five gathered about him.
“He spoke to us,” Faraday said. “DragonStar, it was not you.”
DragonStar closed his eyes again. He remembered how Qeteb had reached claws into his mind as he’d sat at that table, but he’d not known that he’d…he’d…
DragonStar was suddenly filled with such a repugnance he leaned forward and retched. Stars in heaven, was this how a woman felt when she’d been raped?
Faraday swayed forward, then hesitated, and it was Azhure who put her arm around DragonStar’s shoulders.
“What we are afraid of,” Azhure said, “is that we, or any who speak to you or take your orders, may not be aware that Qeteb speaks through you.”
“We will always look at you and wonder,” Faraday said.
DragonStar wiped his mouth, jerking his eyes to meet hers. “You cannot trust me?”
“How can we trust you?” Goldman said. “Is this you now, or a cunning persona of Qeteb?”
DragonStar stared, then rose unsteadily to his feet. “You have no choice. You must trust me.”
“How ‘no choice’?” Axis said. His hand had finally drawn the sword, but he kept the blade flat against his leg.
“Because if you choose not to trust me, then Qeteb automatically wins. But if you choose to ignore what he says he can do, then you have an even chance of coming through. Either I am who I say I am, or I have lost my wits and voice and body to Qeteb. Even chance.”
There was a silence.
“Besides,” DragonStar continued, his voice hard, “no-one has any idea if Qeteb can indeed take possession of my mind and voice at will. When he did so just then he had me at his mercy in his lair. Can he repeat that trick when I am on my own territory and in possession of my own body?
“Dammit, you have no choice but to hope and to trust! If you decide to abandon me now then you will automatically sign your own, and this land’s, death warrants!”
Axis and Azhure looked at each other, and Faraday dropped her eyes. Only Goldman and Gwendylyr continued to regard DragonStar with a steady gaze.
“He’s right,” Goldman suddenly said. “We have no choice but to trust DragonStar. If we do, then we may win and we may fail, but if we don’t, then we guarantee our failure.”
Gwendylyr nodded. “I agree.”
She remembered how DragonStar had aided her when they’d all been trapped in Qeteb’s illusion. Gwendylyr would not abandon him now.
Axis sighed, and sheathed his sword. He attempted a small smile. “I hate the odds, DragonStar. I loathe them. But you are right. None of us have a choice.”
Azhure, her hand still on DragonStar’s arm, nodded, and gave his arm a slight squeeze, but did not speak.
DragonStar looked at Faraday.
She stared at him, and gave a bright, utterly false smile.
She looked like a glass statue that would shatter at any moment.
“Of course I trust you, DragonStar,” she said, and in that one, calamitous sentence, DragonStar knew he had lost her.
“Niah,” DragonStar said. Only a moment had passed since Faraday had spoken, but in that moment a chasm had opened between them. “It has something to do with Niah.”
“Isfrael went to Qeteb with some information about Niah,” Goldman said. They’d all resumed their seats again, but the mood between them was stiff and uncomfortable. How long, DragonStar wondered, before any kind of trust can be rebuilt between us? Qeteb did well…very well indeed.
“There was something he told Qeteb about Niah,” Goldman continued, his face creasing in thought, “that has made Qeteb so confident he thought he had the leisure to toy with DragonStar, and with us through DragonStar.”
“Toy?” wondered DragonStar, and then furthered wondered when—or even if—he should tell his witches of the consequences if they failed against the Demons. No, he must tell them. But not yet…not yet.
“Something about Niah,” he said, remembering Qeteb’s words, “that will enable Qeteb to ‘eat’ Sanctuary and destroy all of us. What? Azhure, can you help?”
Azhure shrugged helplessly. “Niah is much changed since I knew her. Death warped her soul so much that she has lost any—”
“Oh dear gods!” DragonStar leapt to his feet so abruptly that his chair fell over. “Oh dear gods in heaven!”
No-one could speak, all shocked by the look of horror on DragonStar’s face.
DragonStar groped behind him for the chair, righted it, and sank down again. He was trembling so badly he had to grip the armrests with his hands in order to steady himself.
“Niah…” he cleared his throat and began again. “Niah is an Acharite reborn. She has access to the power of the Enemy.”
There was a horrified silence.
Then Gwendylyr spoke, her voice surprisingly calm. “And thus, through her, so also does Qeteb have access to the power of the Enemy.”
DragonStar nodded. “He can use her power to dismantle the enchantments and barriers that the Enemy erected to protect Sanctuary.”
No-one spoke for a long time.
“And does that mean he can counter whatever you throw at him?” Axis said.
“I do not know,” DragonStar whispered. “I do not know!”
No wonder Qeteb was so damned confident! Would his witches have any hope at all?
“But Niah has no soul,” Gwendylyr said, trying desperately to find some shred of hope in the situation. “She is an automat only. She is—”
“She is a body ready to be filled with a soul,” DragonStar said. “As was the child StarLaughter carried about with her. Niah is willing flesh imbued with the power needed to defeat Qeteb, but which Qeteb can now use to turn against us.” DragonStar looked about at the others, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “I think none of us doubt but which soul Qeteb will use to fi
ll her with purpose.”
“Rox,” Faraday eventually whispered. “He will fill her with Rox’s soul.”
“Are you saying,” Azhure said, “that Sanctuary will fall?”
DragonStar nodded, his eyes sick with grief and selfrecrimination. Curse him, he should have realised this earlier! He thanked the Stars that Axis hadn’t killed him earlier when Qeteb had spoken through his mouth. If Axis had done so, then Qeteb could possibly have had the power of the StarSon at his fingertips! They had all come so close to complete annihilation!
“And the Sacred Groves?” Faraday said, pulling DragonStar’s thoughts back to the problem of Niah.
DragonStar nodded again. “They will go first, my beloved,” and he paused as Faraday flinched, although whether at the thought of the Groves falling, or at the endearment, DragonStar did not know. “Qeteb will destroy them first.”
“Why?” Azhure said.
“Because he wants to grow on the power of the Mother before he comes after us,” DragonStar said. “He wants to feast on the Mother.”
“No!” Faraday screamed, and threw herself at DragonStar.
A massive storm held the Icebear Coast trapped. The land had witnessed nothing like this since the days of Gorgrael, and even he hadn’t had the power to generate this much fury. Sleet lashed down from the north in almost horizontal sheets, stinging into ice and snow with such force that shards of ice shot through the air like shrapnel.
DragonStar grabbed his cloak in the instant before the wind tore it away, and tried to shut his ears against the screaming of wind and ice about him. He was leaning against the lee side of an ice wall, but even here the storm threatened to pick him up and hurl him into some ice-needled eternity.
Nothing was sane in this world, nothing at all.
Not even him, if one believed the fearful eyes of Faraday.
From the chamber where DragonStar had realised the appalling significance of Niah, he had gone to check on Sicarius and FortHeart. They’d been in a different part of Sanctuary when he’d called them into Qeteb’s illusion, and DragonStar eventually found them under a buiche-fruit tree, being tended by an Icarii Healer.