The stallion had been as fast as the wind, according to legend, because his paws lent him cat-like grace and swiftness, and he was as savage as any wild beast, striking out with his claws in battle, and dealing death to any who dared attack his rider. No wonder the emperor had managed to conquer so much with such a mount beneath him.
And here seven waited. Tencendor would quail before them.
Seven, one for each of the Demons, one for her—and one, eventually, for her son.
“DragonStar,” she whispered, cuddling her child close, and started down the slope.
They rode north-west through the forest through the night, heading for Cauldron Lake. The Demons leading, StarLaughter, her child safe in a sling at her bosom, behind them. They rode, but it was not a pleasant ride.
The horses were swift and comfortable to sit, but they were unnerved by the forest.
StarLaughter did not blame them, for she hated the forest herself—no wonder the Demons wanted to leave it as quickly as they did. To each side, trees hissed, their branches crackling ominously above, the ground shifting about the base of their trunks as if roots strove for the surface.
Barzula laughed, but there was a note of strain in his laughter. “See the trees,” he said. “They think they can stop us, but all they can do is rattle their twigs in fury.”
None of the others replied. Mot, Sheol and Raspu were tense, watchful, while beside Barzula, Rox rode as if in a waking dream. This was night, his time, and terror drove all before it. Rox had his head tilted slightly back, his eyes and mouth open. A faint wisp of grey sickness slithered from a nostril and into the night. He fed, growing more powerful with every soul he tainted.
If the trees unnerved the Demons and StarLaughter alike, then even worse than the trees were the beings that slunk in the shadows. Scores, perhaps hundreds, of strange creatures crept, parallel with the path, through the forest. StarLaughter caught only the barest glimpses of them—but they were creatures such as she had never seen before: badgers with horns and crests of feathers, birds with gems for eyes, great cats splotched with emerald and orange.
StarLaughter did not like them at all. She tightened her hold about her son, and called softly to Raspu who was immediately in front of her: “My friend, can these hurt us?”
Raspu hesitated, then twisted slightly on his mount so he could reply. “Once your son strides in all his glory, my dear, this forest will wither and die, and all that inhabit it will run screaming before him.”
StarLaughter smiled. “Good.” She started to say something more, but there was a movement a little further down the path before them, and then a great roar tore into the night.
“Get you gone from these paths! Your tread fouls the very soil!”
The horses abruptly halted. They hissed and milled about agitatedly. StarLaughter peered ahead—and laughed.
Before them stood the strangest man she had ever seen. He wore only a wrap—a wrap that seemed woven of twigs and leaves, for Stars’ sakes!—about his hips, and was otherwise bare-footed and chested. His hair was a wild tangle of faded blonde curls, and two horns arched up from his hairline.
True, he had the feel of power about him, but StarLaughter did not think it was any match for what her companions wielded.
To one side and slightly behind the man stood a slender woman, dark haired and serene-faced, wearing a robe with leaping deer about its hemline. Her hand rested on the man’s shoulder.
StarLaughter’s lip curled. A Bane. How pitiful.
“Leave this place!” the betwigged man cried, and took a belligerent step forward.
“And who are you to so demand?” Sheol said pleasantly, but StarLaughter could hear the power that underlay her voice, and she smiled. This man was dead. The only question was who would strike the match.
“I am Isfrael, Mage-King of the Avar,” the man replied.
“And the woman?” Sheol asked. It was polite, perhaps, to find out the names of those about to die, but StarLaughter had always thought such niceties well beyond Sheol. Mayhap she was but toying with her prey.
“I am Shra,” the slender woman said. “Senior Bane among the Avar.”
“The Avar were ever troublesome,” StarLaughter said. “Grim-faced and petulant-browed. Perhaps it is time they were finally put away.”
Surprisingly, Isfrael smiled. “You do not like this place, do you. Why is that?”
Sheol shifted on her horse, and shot a look at Raspu, but when she spoke, her voice was even and calm. “It is a place that has no meaning, Mage-King. I do not like it.”
“You do not like it, Demon, because you cannot touch it.”
Sheol literally hissed, then she swivelled about on her horse. “Rox!”
The Demon of Terror slowly focused his eyes on the two before him, then his face twisted, and he cried out. “I cannot! The trees protect them!”
Isfrael smiled, and took another step forward. He raised a hand, and in it StarLaughter saw that he clutched a twig.
“You ravage freely across the plains, Demons, but know that eventually the very land will rise up against you.”
“When we are whole, we will tear this land apart, rock by rock, tree by tree!” Sheol said.
Isfrael’s grin widened…and then he threw the twig at Sheol.
Sheol knew what that twig was. It was not simply a twig, but the entire shadowy power of the trees that hurtled towards her.
She screamed in stark terror, reflexively raising both arms before her face, and then her scream turned into a roar and the twig disintegrated the instant before it hit her.
“Filth!” she screamed, and she grabbed the mane of her horse and dug her heels cruelly into its flanks.
The horse leaped forward, bellowing, its teeth bared, its neck arching as if to strike.
As if from nowhere, another twig appeared in Isfrael’s hand, and this he brandished before him. “Shra! Stand firm!” he cried. “I rely on you now as never before!”
The horse lunged, snapping at the twig, but it did not seize it.
“Filth!” Sheol screamed again, and now Barzula and Mot also drove their creatures forward.
Unnoticed, the seventh, and riderless, horse, slunk back a few steps until it merged with the night.
“Shra!” Isfrael murmured. As mighty as he was, he still needed her power to sustain him. The three black beasts roiled before him, snapping and snarling, swiping their claws through the air.
Yet still they held back, so that their teeth and claws came within a finger span of Isfrael, but did not actually touch him.
“The very land will rise up against you!” Isfrael shouted one more time, and at his shout the trees themselves screamed.
Shra staggered, almost unable to control the power that Isfrael was using. She could feel it rope through her, feel it burn up through the soles of her feet where they touched the forest floor, flood through her body, and then flow into Isfrael through her hand on his shoulder.
All the Demons were screaming now, unstinting in their efforts to drive their mounts forward over this man before he could bring the full power of the trees to bear upon them. The air before Isfrael was filled with the yellowed teeth of the horses and the fury of their talons—but he was holding, and with luck he might even manage to drive the Demons back.
The seventh horse abruptly materialised out of the darkness behind Shra. Utterly silent, it surged forward, reared up on its hind legs, and then brought all its weight and fury to bear in one horrific slashing movement of its forepaws.
Neither Shra nor Isfrael had realised it was there. All their concentration was on the Demons before them, on driving them out, on…Shra’s eyes widened in complete shock, and she staggered backwards, breaking the contact between her and Isfrael. Claws raked into her flesh from her neck to her buttocks, ripping the flesh apart to expose her spine.
“Isfrael!” she cried, and collapsed on the ground.
At the loss of contact Isfrael spun about—to see the massive beast tear he
r apart. Blood splattered across his face and chest.
“Shra!” he screamed.
Behind him the horses lunged, but as they did so Isfrael dropped to his knees by Shra’s side under the flailing paws of the black horse, and tried to scoop her into his arms.
The other horses, the screaming Demons on their backs, milled above the two, biting and slashing.
StarLaughter, who had kept her own steed back, sat and smiled. The scene reminded her of the kill at the end of the hunt. She could see nothing save the plunging bodies of the horses, the Demons—now laughing and screaming hysterically—on their backs. Or almost nothing, except for the scattering drops of blood that flew through the air.
“A Mage-King,” she murmured to herself. “How utterly, indescribably useless.”
And then something swept past her.
She spun about, gasping. It was so fast that she did not get a good look at the creature—all she had was an impression of white. Of white, and of horns.
Something horned.
An owl fluttered down from the forest canopy and nipped at StarLaughter’s hair.
She screamed, crouching over her baby.
Something else slithered out from between the trees—a snake, but a snake with small wings just behind its head. It sank its teeth into her horse’s back paw, and the creature panicked and bolted, careening into the bloody melee before it.
StarLaughter, clinging desperately to the horse’s mane, and trying to protect her baby, only had momentary impressions of the nightmare her horse had plunged her into.
The Demons were now silent, fighting an enemy that she could not immediately see.
Horses’ heads, rearing back, eyes rolling white with terror.
A bloodied mess on the ground, and the horses’ paws and lower legs thick with ropy blood and flesh.
The Mage-King—still alive—slowly rising, his face terrible with vengeance.
All StarLaughter wanted to do now was escape, any way she could. She fought to free her hand from her horse’s mane, but it was tangled tight. Her wings beat futilely, trying to lift her from the horse’s back, but she couldn’t free herself, she couldn’t free herself, she couldn’t—
Suddenly a white form rose, almost as if from the very earth beneath her horse.
StarLaughter screamed in utter terror. A huge white stag reared before her, and then it plunged down, sinking its teeth into her horse’s neck.
Both beasts writhed, both trying to gain the advantage. The stag’s horns razored through the air, inches from StarLaughter’s face, inches from her precious child—and still her hand was trapped in her horse’s forever-damned mane!
She screamed again, thinking herself finally dead, when Sheol, Barzula and Rox simultaneously drove their horses onto the stag. It let her horse go, and suddenly StarLaughter was free, her horse bolting down the forest paths, the Demons’ horses pounding behind her.
In the forest to the west, Drago’s eyes flew open, and he fought for control as panic and terror flooded through him. In some part of him he could feel the Demons, feel their fingers reaching into him, feel them draining him. He could barely control the impulse to rise and flee through the forest, flee from something horrid that nibbled at him, that sunk sharp teeth into his heels, that lunged for his soft belly with razored horns—
He rose on his elbows, his eyes jerking from side to side. Faraday slept serenely by his side, and the ranks of soldiers that rippled out from Zared’s campfire likewise lay calmly, lost in sleep.
Finally Drago managed to control his sense of panic. He looked to the east, troubled, and after a long, long time drifted back to sleep.
They rode for an hour, and then, as their mounts finally slaked their terror, pulled to a halt in a glade.
“When Qeteb walks again we will raze this forest to the bedrock!” Sheol screamed, turning her horse so she could see back the way they’d come, as if she might still see Isfrael standing there.
“Every one of the creatures that hide here shall become our fodder,” Rox said, with more calm but equal venom.
StarLaughter looked between them, shaken to the very core of her being. She’d thought the Demons completely invulnerable, she couldn’t believe that…
Sheol turned to stare flatly at her. “It is this forest. It is too shady,” she said. “But we will grow stronger the more we feed. And one day, one day…”
StarLaughter nodded. “How far are we from Cauldron Lake?”
The Demons relaxed, and smiled. “Not far,” Mot said. “We will be there in a day or so. And after Cauldron Lake, we will be stronger.”
He looked at the flaccid child in StarLaughter’s arms. “More whole.”
There was a movement overhead, and all jerked their heads skywards, expecting further attack.
All relaxed almost instantly.
Black shapes drifted down through the forest canopy. The Hawkchilds.
“Sweet children,” Sheol whispered as they landed, and dismounted from her horse so that she could scratch the nearest under the chin.
As a whole they tilted their heads the more easily to feel her fingers, whispering softly.
“I think,” Raspu said, “that it is time we put our friends to good use.”
The other Demons nodded.
“I admit to a dislike at being so ambushed,” Sheol said. She dropped her hand, and when she spoke again her tone had the ring of command about it, even though she spoke softly.
“Scout, my sweet children. Find for us those who think to stop us. Where are the magicians of this world? Where is this StarSon who thinks to rule from the Throne of Stars? And where the armies who think to trample us underfoot?”
Behind her the other Demons laughed, but Sheol continued without paying them any heed.
“Find for us and, finding, set those who run to our song against them. Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” came back the whispered answer. “Yes, yes, yes, yes.”
“Then fly.”
And they flew.
Isfrael stood staring down the forest path for almost two hours. About him Minstrelsea’s fey creatures milled, touching him briefly, gently, grieving with him.
Eventually, Isfrael sank to one knee beside what was left of Shra. He stared a long moment, then he dropped his face into one hand and sobbed. He had loved Shra as he’d never loved another. She’d been the warmth of his youth, and the strength of his manhood. She had shown him the paths to the Sacred Groves, and she had inducted him into the laughter of love.
She had been his lover, his only companion, his only friend.
Isfrael bent down and wiped the fingers of his right hand through her torn flesh. Then he raised it and ran three fingers down his face, leaving trails of glistening blood running down each cheek and down the centre of his nose.
“By the very Mother Earth herself,” he said, looking again down the path where the Demons had disappeared, “this land will rise up against you.”
And then he rose, and walked down the path.
Towards Cauldron Lake.
Towards the man WingRidge had told him would aid Tencendor.
But Isfrael had changed. The debacle of the Demons’ passage through the Star Gate into Tencendor had suddenly become very, very personal. Now Isfrael had his own agenda, and the StarSon could be damned to a bloody mess if he thought to get in its way.
8
Towards Cauldron Lake
“There was a disturbance last night,” Drago said quietly to Faraday as he watched Zared rummaging through some gear for a sack. “In the forest.”
She looked sharply at him. “Yes,” she said. “To the southeast.” She twisted her thick chestnut hair into a plait. “How did you know?”
Drago hesitated, trying to put emotion into words. “I could feel it, somewhere within me. Terror and savage pleasure both. It was the Demons…but what happened I do not know.”
The feeling had disturbed Drago more than he revealed. It was almost as if…almos
t as if he had a bond with the Demons.
“Death,” Faraday said. “Death happened. But who or how I do not know. Only that the Demons were involved.”
She grimaced. The Demons were involved in every terror that struck Tencendor now. She watched Drago carefully as he walked a few steps away, pretending an interest in a saddle thrown carelessly against a tree trunk. He’d lapsed into his introspectiveness again, but Faraday was not surprised or perturbed by it. He needed to accept, and to explore, and for that he needed time and quiet.
There was a step behind her. Zared. In his hand he held a small hessian sack.
“Is this what you needed, Drago?” he asked. Zared was hesitant. There was something puzzling him about Drago, but he could not quite fix the puzzle yet in his mind, and that irritated him.
Drago took the sack from Zared, shaking it out. It was of rough weave, tattered about the edges, and with a small cloth tie threaded through its opening.
He smiled again. “It is perfect, Zared.”
He turned to Faraday. “Faraday, may I ask a favour of you?”
She frowned, still bemused by the request for the sack. “What?”
For an answer, Drago leaned down swiftly and took a sharp knife that was resting by the loaf of bread Leagh had just put out for their breakfast.
“A lock of your hair,” he said, and without waiting for an answer, reached out and cut a short length of Faraday’s hair that curled about her forehead.
She jumped, surprised but not scared. “Drago, why—?”
He grinned impishly, and dropped it into the sack. “I like to cook,” he said, and then laughed at all the surprised faces about him.
“Drago?” Zenith said. She and StarDrifter had just walked up. “What kind of answer is that? Look at us!” She gestured about to the circle of bewildered people. “Explain!”