Crusader Page 8

  There was, apparently, nowhere to go.

  Except that Qeteb had given her a destination, hadn’t he?

  “Spiredore,” StarGrace said in chirp-like tones that she thought might please the tower, “take me to Tencendor’s lost peoples.”

  And she folded her black wings neatly at her back, and set her clawed feet to the first steps of the stairway that led upwards from the floor of the tower.

  “You said that you and I must return first, DragonStar?” DareWing asked.

  “Yes,” DragonStar said. “For two reasons. One, I need to know if Spiredore is still useful.”

  “Is it our only link with the Field of Flowers?” Leagh said. She was still trying to come to terms with her spurt of fear at the idea that she’d be needed to battle one of the Demons. Her? What of her child? In what danger would she place it?

  “We can only approach the Field through the wasteland that was Tencendor,” DragonStar affirmed. “And unless I can find another route, or unless we want to climb the stairs through the Keep, Spiredore is our best way to reach the wasteland. But I don’t want to risk everyone in the finding out whether the Demons have penetrated Spiredore yet—”

  “Would they manage to enter Sanctuary?” Faraday asked. Gods, if they managed that…!

  “No. They might find out where Sanctuary is, but they will not be able to break through its protective enchantments.”

  And yet…DragonStar’s mind was consumed with the impression he’d had when he’d originally seen Sanctuary; it had looked just like one of the worlds the Demons had dragged him through in their leaps through space towards Tencendor.

  What if there was a flaw? What if the Demons could find their way in?

  Stars! Where would the peoples go then?

  DragonStar gave himself a mental shake to get rid of the negative thoughts. The Enemy had built this place, and they’d damn well meant it as a Sanctuary against the Demons. They knew what they were doing, didn’t they?

  “Are you sure?” Faraday asked, and DragonStar sent her a reassuring smile.

  “Of course. Now, I want to take DareWing with me,” DragonStar turned to the birdman and managed a considerably more genuine smile, “not only for the company, but because there is something I need to show him. Something he, as we, will need in our battle to reclaim the wasteland.”

  “And that is…” DareWing said.

  “Your army,” DragonStar said, and then laughed at the hungry expression that filled DareWing’s face.

  Chapter 10

  A Busy Day in Spiredore

  Take me to the lost peoples of Tencendor, StarGrace had asked, and Spiredore did. StarGrace walked up a series of stairways, across a myriad of balconies, and eventually Spiredore grew merciful on her aching legs and simmering temper, and led her to a short tunnel of blue mist.

  At the end of the tunnel StarGrace could see the milling forms of a score of people, and she laughed.

  “Maybe Qeteb will allow me my revenge on WolfStar for this service,” she cried, and stepped into the blue-misted tunnel to see just where this new StarSon had hidden the millions of souls the Demons so hungered for.

  When she’d almost reached the end of the tunnel, StarGrace halted and stared, her eyes draining of all their triumph.

  Then she snarled. This damned tower had thought to amuse itself at her expense!

  Spiredore had indeed led her to the lost peoples of Tencendor…but not the hidden peoples. Beyond the end of the tunnel StarGrace could discern a cave, and in that cave huddled and whispered and scampered a score of crazed humans. They had torn off (or eaten) their clothes, and now were naked, clothed only in sores and abrasions. Their maddened eyes shifted constantly, and they scratched at themselves and at the others who shifted past them.

  “Ssssss!” StarGrace almost fell over in her haste to get back inside Spiredore. Stars alone knew where that cave was, and she didn’t want to waste time flying back to Spiredore (and a waiting and impatient Qeteb) to start all over again.

  She relaxed slightly as her feet clicked onto the boards of a stairway again, and she halted, and spoke with some aspersion.

  “Spiredore, take me to the place where StarSon has hidden the peoples of Tencendor.”

  And she set her feet to the stairs before her.

  “My army?” DareWing said as he and DragonStar walked along the road towards the place where the silvery bridge had once spanned the chasm. DragonStar had left the Star Stallion, the Alaunt and the lizard in Sanctuary, saying he wanted only to risk what was necessary, but he carried the Wolven and its quiver of arrows over his back.

  “Who do you think?” DragonStar said.

  DareWing frowned, and then a thought so extraordinary occurred to him that he halted, and grabbed DragonStar’s shoulder. “But they’re dead!”

  “So were you,” DragonStar said, his eyes crinkling with humour.

  “The Strike Force,” DareWing breathed, his eyes unfocused, his mind remembering the thrill of the hunt through the thermals.

  DragonStar nodded.

  DareWing refocused his gaze on DragonStar’s face. “No wonder you wanted to bring me back as one of your five.”

  “The Strike Leader. Yes.”

  DareWing breathed in deeply, filled with such joy he could hardly believe it. The Strike Force!

  “But first we must negotiate Spiredore,” DragonStar said, “and find out if its stairways are still safe.”

  They walked the remaining distance to the chasm in silence, and it was only once they were there that DareWing came out of his reverie enough to ask how they were going to get across. “Didn’t you use the bridge to cross into Spiredore?”

  “Not exactly,” DragonStar said. “I used it as a focus for my own enchantment. I don’t actually need the bridge to cross, but I do need something to focus on in order to return us—” he hesitated slightly over that word, and DareWing glanced sharply at him, “—to this point. But a bridge we do not actually need.”

  DragonStar reached behind him and drew an arrow out of his quiver. In one powerful movement, he thrust it into the ground before them.

  Its blue feathers and its shaft quivered slightly with the residual force of DragonStar’s action, then it stood still.

  “And so,” DragonStar said, unsheathing his sword and drawing the doorway of light, “now Spiredore.”

  StarGrace climbed higher and higher through the crazy world of Spiredore, her temper increasing with every step.

  Where was this tower leading her? She’d climb to the sun before she ever reached a destination!

  Suddenly she halted, and her entire body stilled.

  There was something else in the tower. StarGrace didn’t know in what other manner to describe the feeling, only that in the space betwixt one heartbeat and another something else had stepped into Spiredore.

  Qeteb? One of the other Demons?

  No. This presence had a different feel about it.

  There! Above her! StarGrace crouched under an overhang of a balcony and peered upwards.

  DragonStar paused in their passage through Spiredore. “It is not as safe as it once was,” he said. “We must be careful.”

  She narrowed her eyes, searching the gloom above, then paused. Two men, one Icarii, one not, walking down a stairwell.

  StarGrace almost panicked, for they were coming directly towards her, but just before they turned the curve of stairs that would have brought them face to face, the two men turned into a balcony, and vanished down a tunnel of blue mist.

  StarGrace waited a few minutes until she was sure they were gone, then she resumed her climb.

  Within two turns of her stairwell, Spiredore presented StarGrace with another blue-misted tunnel.

  They emerged onto a plain blasted with an icy northerly wind. Wind-driven snow stung at their faces and eyes before it hit the ground and disappeared into the numerous cracks and chasms that wove their demented way across the flat, barren surface.

  “Where are we?”
DareWing gasped, wrapping both arms and wings about himself in a vain attempt at protection against the wind and snow.

  DragonStar looked about, as uncomfortable as was DareWing. “Somewhere in the northern Avonsdale Plains, I think. See? Those must be the southern Western Ranges. Or maybe even a bit further west towards the Andeis coast…I’m not too sure.”

  Frankly, DareWing didn’t give a damn about their precise location, and wished he hadn’t asked. “How will you get us to the Field of Flowers?”

  DragonStar turned to look at DareWing. “Oh, I am not. I think you should.”

  “Me? How am I going to do it?”

  “Look within yourself, DareWing. You have been in the Field before. You have been through the gate. This time you must open it for yourself.”

  DareWing tightened his arms, wondering if he would freeze solid in four breaths or five. “Why couldn’t you have told me this while we were still in Sanctuary? I could have thought about it before. I could have had it all worked out before we got into this—”

  “DareWing. Do it!”

  DareWing almost cursed before he realised he’d have to open his mouth and expose himself to more of the freezing air in order to do so. He contented himself with a hard glare in DragonStar’s direction, then he concentrated on the problem at hand.

  This was the first time since DragonStar had transformed him that he’d been well enough to even contemplate exploring the newly-resurrected Acharite power within himself.

  Let alone use it to propel both of them into the Field of Flowers.

  “Think,” DragonStar whispered underneath the howling wind. “Think…what do you remember most about the Field?”

  DareWing frowned. Flowers. He remembered flowers. Then he almost smiled, for he remembered the feel of the sun on his back, and the peace of the Field, and then he did smile, for those were things he’d enjoy feeling right now.

  Instantly he was overwhelmed with the scent of the billions upon billions of flowers that existed within the Field, and then they were there.

  DareWing leaned back his head and laughed.

  StarGrace smirked. She stood at the edge of the blue-misted tunnel, still safe within Spiredore’s power. Beyond her lay a chasm, and beyond the chasm a road wended its way through a plain dotted liberally with flowering shrubs. Far away rose a line of blue and purple mountains, cradling the entrance of a valley. With her powerful sight, StarGrace could see the shapes of Icarii spiralling above the valley entrance.

  The hidden souls had been found.

  Her smiled widened momentarily, then she stepped back into Spiredore.

  “See,” said DragonStar, and from the infinite sky above them floated down DareWing’s warriors.

  The Strike Force, and yet not.

  That these warriors were Icarii was easy enough to see, for together with their human bodies they had the wings and the chiselled facial features of the Icarii.

  And yet they had been changed. Every one of them had wings of a different colour—purple wings, another bronze, yet another gold, until all the shades of the rainbow had been represented—and each warrior had jewel-coloured eyes that matched the particular shade of his or her wings.

  But it was their bodies that were the most amazing. Every one of them was diaphanous, almost completely translucent. They glowed with a silvery hue, and as they floated down by the score the outlines of individual bodies were lost in the collective rainbow-coloured shimmer of wings and flashing eyes.

  DareWing had never seen anything so beautiful, nor so deadly. Each warrior’s eyes shone brilliant with determination, with anger, with the need for the fight.

  “Your Strike Force,” said DragonStar, awed himself. “My vanguard.”

  “What do you want us to do?” DareWing said. His eyes had not left the milling hue before him.

  “I want you to fight for me,” said DragonStar softly, and a great cry went up from the massed warriors.

  Qeteb leaned over the saddle of his beast and laughed. “It was that easy?”

  StarGrace inclined her head.

  “That tower will lead us straight to the huddled masses?”

  StarGrace waved a hand about languidly. “Almost instantly.”

  “There must be a trap somewhere,” Sheol muttered. “It can’t be this straightforward!”

  “The tower is a simple thing,” StarGrace said. “It does as it is bid.”

  Qeteb sat and thought. It was too easy, but he wasn’t sure where the difficulty would be: in their use of Spiredore, or in their attempts to reach the crowd of souls awaiting their appetites across the chasm.

  “There is something else,” StarGrace said, and Qeteb jerked out of his reverie.

  “Yes?”

  StarGrace told them of the two men she’d seen pass briefly through the tower.

  Qeteb stared at her, then grinned. “We have them,” he whispered, and the whisper reached into every corner of the land. “Not this hour, or even this day, but we will eventually have them.”

  He laughed, and then waved his fellow Demons through the door into Spiredore. As they entered, Qeteb turned and thrust his fist towards StarLaughter.

  “Stay here, bitch,” he said, “because if you are not here when I return, I will hunt you down and stake your naked body out on the wasteland for the dogs and boars to couple with.”

  “Stay here,” DragonStar said, “until I need you.”

  DareWing raised one black eyebrow.

  “Something is not right with Spiredore,” DragonStar continued, “and I would rather not risk you. You will be safe enough—more than safe!—within the Field of Flowers.”

  “When will you call me?”

  DragonStar shrugged. “When the time is right, my friend. What else can I say?”

  “Be careful,” DareWing said, and DragonStar nodded, letting his eyes drift over the shifting throng of silvery bodies before him, before giving DareWing a perfunctory smile.

  Then he turned to one side, drew the glowing doorway, and stepped through into Spiredore.

  DareWing stared at the spot where he’d vanished, then furrowed his brow thoughtfully. Surely he would be able to move back into the wasteland in the same manner he’d moved into the Field? To imagine the environment, the sensations, the smells? Then, of course, he’d be able to transfer back here whenever the need arose.

  In the meantime, his band of glinting warriors could be what they’d trained for in their previous lifetimes: a Strike Force.

  “Let me prepare the way for you, StarSon,” DareWing whispered.

  DragonStar knew the instant he stepped into Spiredore that he’d transferred into crisis.

  When he and DareWing had come through previously, DragonStar had felt a wrongness within the tower, but it had been nothing compared to this.

  And he knew precisely what it was, for he had felt this before.

  Qeteb.

  DragonStar felt both terror and perfect stillness at the same time. Terror, because that was what Qeteb dealt in and what his entire fabric of being was, and again terror because DragonStar knew that currently he was no match for Qeteb—not for a one on one confrontation. He needed further thought, a knowledge of Katie’s Enchanted Song Book, and far more experience before he could possibly confront Qeteb.

  Qeteb was too malevolent for him right now.

  And DragonStar felt a perfect stillness because he was almost relieved to at least know that the Demons could use Spiredore. He could not be trapped now that he knew.

  Unless they trapped him right now.

  DragonStar knew he should transfer immediately into Sanctuary, but he edged closer to the balustrade of his balcony and peered over.

  Far below him a mass of black wound its way upward. As he watched, the leading figure stopped, and raised up his black metalled head.

  StarSon!

  DragonStar felt the power of a frightful malevolence (hate, envy, despair, pestilence) surge towards him.

  “Spiredore,” he snapped, without an
y thought, “take that power and vent it elsewhere!”

  And far to the north a group of icebergs exploded as Spiredore redirected the power.

  Clever, StarSon, Qeteb whispered towards him. But how pitiful that you needed Spiredore to deal with that for you. Are you so weak?

  DragonStar backed away from the balcony.

  Are you so weak, StarSon?

  He backed against a wall, and listened to the taunts flow upwards.

  Are you weak that you need others to protect you, StarSon?

  DragonStar drew his sword—

  Pitiful little StarSon. A chorus of laughter and howls echoed up the stairwell.

  Pitiful little StarSon.

  —and drew the doorway of light, hating the relief that flowed through his body as he stepped through.

  DragonStar stopped by the blue-feathered arrow that he’d earlier stuck in the edge of the chasm, letting his shoulders slump in relief—and a feeling that he thought might be self-disgust. Had he been afraid?

  He sheathed his sword, then flexed his hand, trying to work out some of his tension.

  He needed to get back into Sanctuary, think about—

  “StarSon! How nice to see you again so soon!” A mocking laugh followed the words.

  DragonStar whipped about and stared across the chasm. Six black beasts, gruesome in their constantly shifting, fluid forms, stood on the other side. Behind them stretched one of Spiredore’s blue-misted tunnels.

  On the backs of the beasts were the Demons, as well the woman that DragonStar supposed was Niah reborn.

  Qeteb—it could be no-one else—had edged his beast slightly forward. He was a vile creature, black metal armour encasing his entire form, and even plating his wings.

  He was massive, at least half as tall again as the tallest man, and with a thickness of figure to match.

  “Why not step across, Qeteb?” DragonStar called. “I am here. Reach me if you can.”