Crusader (62 page)

He had no neck or chin, and his lumpish face seemed to grow directly from his white, hairless chest.

Beautiful coppery curls fell from his head over his shoulders and down his back, merging finally with the feathers of his black and mouldy wings.

Qeteb was a sad mockery of life, and the saddest thing of all was that he did not realise it.

He grinned, and started forward across the field.

“We have here before us,” announced DragonStar to the crowd, “the Demons of Hunger, Tempest, and Despair.”

His voice was quiet, but beautifully modulated, and it reached every ear in the square.

“Their times,” DragonStar continued, “are dawn, mid-morning and mid-afternoon.”

He paused, and looked out over the crowd. “You represent the end result of their crimes, which stretch backwards through an eternity to the time of original Creation. They have ransacked the universe, and ravaged the souls of the very stars themselves.”

The crowd murmured, its sound a rising swell, and DragonStar gave them a few moments in which to voice their despair.

When he resumed speaking, his voice had the tone and authority of a tolling bell. “Here they kneel, and now is their time. What are we to do with them?”

Again there was a swell of formless sound from the thronging masses. It surged and billowed forth, engulfing both DragonStar and the Demons.

The Demons cringed. DragonStar grinned.

And the murmuring died. A decision had been reached.

From the crowd stepped three people. An emaciated man, with a distended, lumpish belly. A woman, her eyes roiling with some unknown turbulence. Another woman, dragging behind her a washing line. At the end of the washing line bounced the still form of a toddling girl-child, the line wrapped tight about her plump throat.

The Demons suddenly screamed. Not from the sight of the three people, but because each of the arrows about their wrists had suddenly flamed into life, burning into their flesh.

“Retribution,” whispered DragonStar.

The man and the two women slowly climbed the steps onto the platform.

The emaciated man stood before Mot, the woman with the maddened eyes before Barzula, and before Sheol stood the woman who had the body of her daughter dangling strangled on the washing line.

“Your time has come,” said DragonStar, and with one motion every person in the crowd raised their right arm and held it high, the palms of their hands turned towards the platform.

There was no sound.

The emaciated man stepped up to Mot, who was still writhing and moaning from the pain of the burning arrow.

The man stared, then reached up, took hold of the noose, and pulled it down until he could drape it about Mot’s neck.

“I ate of stones,” the man said in a curiously toneless voice, “until my stomach burst, and the stones ravaged
through my belly until I shat stones. Now you shall know your own time.”

He stepped back.

For an instant, nothing happened, then the burning arrow twisted about Mot’s wrists moved. It slithered up Mot’s right arm, twisted about his neck, then coiled about the rope that rose behind him.

In a movement so fast few could follow it, the arrow climbed the rope to the top of the scaffold, and, before any could draw breath in amazement, the rope contracted to an arm’s length.

Mot shot into the air, suspended in the noose.

The rope tightened, and Mot’s mouth opened in a silent scream, his feet kicking desperately below him.

The crowd smiled, their faces grim, their hands still held in the air.

Mot twisted frantically about on the end of the rope, the arrow still burning above him where the rope was tied to the scaffold, but the Demon did not die of strangulation.

Instead, he hungered.

He opened his mouth, and formed words, although no sound came forth.

Feed me! Feed me!

“If you wish,” said DragonStar, and again the burning arrow moved.

It slithered back down the rope, around the noose, and into Mot’s mouth.

It disappeared.

For a moment, nothing.

Then Mot’s face contorted in an agony so great his eyes almost started from his head. His arms jerked in a mad dance at his side.

A small red, glowing spot formed in the centre of his belly, and, before any could draw breath, the arrow burst forth.

Mot’s belly exploded, blood spraying through the air. His body jerked to a halt…and changed. It blurred from a humanoid form into that of a rat, and then into a worm.

Finally, it turned into a loose lump of flesh that dropped out of the noose to the wooden platform where it sizzled momentarily before vanishing completely.

The emaciated man, still standing before the spot where Mot had been, looked skyward, then raised his right hand.

The arrow tumbled down from the sky, and the man caught it deftly. He turned, descended the steps, walked over to DragonStar and held out the arrow.

“Thank you,” he said, and DragonStar took the arrow, nodding slightly but saying nothing.

The man took his place within the crowd.

Now the woman with the ravaged eyes stepped forth to Barzula. “I walked in madness for many weeks,” she said, “a tempest raging through my mind. Eventually I died when I walked into a fireball tumbling across the wasteland.”

She paused. “Now you shall know your own time.” And she stepped back.

As with Mot, the arrow about Barzula’s wrists moved up his arm, about his neck, and yet further up the rope to the top of the scaffold where it writhed.

The rope contracted, and Barzula was sprung into the air, kicking as frantically as Mot had done.

And as with Mot, Barzula did not strangle. Instead, he was consumed with tempest.

The arrow exploded into a firestorm. It hailed down a rain of molten lead droplets that ate into Barzula’s body until it sizzled and smoked.

The woman smiled, although her eyes were now sad and compassionate.

The hail of molten lead became worse, and from somewhere, and despite the noose about his neck, Barzula screamed.

It was the final sound he made. His entire body was now smouldering, the lead eating into his flesh, and within moments he began to disintegrate.

Lumps of flesh fell to the wooden platform where, as with Mot, they sizzled before disappearing.

More flesh fell, and now, that which hung suspended from the noose was not recognisable as humanoid, but only as a clump of burning meat.

Soon, it, too, fell to the platform, sizzled, and was gone.

The arrow fell into the woman’s hand, and as had the emaciated man, she returned it to DragonStar, solemnly thanking him.

And, then, to Sheol.

The woman with the child stepped forth and said: “When you and yours broke through the Star Gate into this beautiful land, I was hanging out my washing. Despair overwhelmed me, and caused me to consider my toddling child’s future life. I thought that she would only suffer, perhaps at the hands of an abusive husband, and so I lifted her up and twisted the washing line about her neck, strangling her unto death.”

The woman paused, and sobbed, a hand to her mouth. “I killed my own daughter.
Now you shall know your own time!”

Again the arrow sprang, slithering into movement and climbing to the top of the scaffold.

And the entire scaffold changed…

…into a washing line strung between two forked poles.

The rope around Sheol’s neck hauled her upward, upward, upward until it twisted among the rope of the washing line, and this time the Demon
did
strangle, her face and eyes bulging as the washing line tightened, tightened, tightened about her neck.

Sheol despaired.

Somehow she managed to extend a hand to DragonStar, her bulging eyes pleading, but his face was implacable, and Sheol dropped her hand.

Strands of rope ravelled down from the line, twisting themselves about Sheol’s entire body until she was encased in tightening coils of rope.

They squeezed.

Blood and slivers of flesh oozed out from between the coils of rope.

The woman, unperturbed, leaned down and unwound her own washing line from about her child’s neck, and then she lifted the child up, and the child smiled, and flung her arms about her mother’s neck.

Sheol fell apart. Again, as with Barzula, flesh and blood dropped to the platform, sizzling and disappearing.

Eventually there was nothing left to squeeze, and the ropes themselves dropped to the platform and disappeared.

The arrow fell down, caught this time by the child, and she and her mother returned it to DragonStar.

The woman had tears of joy running down her face. “We thank you,” she said as she handed back the arrow.

DragonStar also wept, for he had lived with the guilt of this child’s death for a very long time, and he accepted the arrow and slid it home with its companions.

As one, the crowd lowered their hands and turned their faces to DragonStar?

And us? And us?

DragonStar turned to the old man, who had been sitting quietly in the driver’s seat of the cart. The man sighed, and climbed down.

As he did so, he transformed…into the Butler.

DragonStar grinned, and said to the crowd: “I think you will find that the Butler, efficient accountant that he is, has each and every one of your names in his account book. Present yourself to him and he will tick off your name, make his accounting, and show you through the gate into the garden. There, you will rest amid the flowers.”

The woman with the child, who was still standing at DragonStar’s knee, spoke for the entire crowd.

“Thank you,” she said again, but with such joy that DragonStar had to fight back more tears.

“Thank you.”

Q
eteb slogged his way through the ploughed field, cursing and grunting.

He had to be able to get out of here somehow. After all, wasn’t he destined to win? Hadn’t his Demons won out against DragonStar’s pitiful witches, three against two?

That he was still in the Maze, Qeteb had no doubt. The ridges and furrows of the ploughed earth did not run even or straight. Instead they formed twists and conundrums, and Qeteb knew that if only he could find his way through the puzzle of the field, he would win his freedom.

For his companions he cared naught. They had served their usefulness—nay! They had become a liability, and Qeteb was glad to be rid of them.

No doubt they were already writhing on the end of the pretty StarSon’s sword.

Well, there they could stay for all Qeteb cared. He could exist without them, whereas they were nothing without
him
.

He grinned, and slogged on, dragging each foot up from the earth before sinking it down again.

His grin faded. Damn this!

The clamour of hounds sounded again, this time much closer, and Qeteb stopped and swung his head around, his eyes staring.

Far distant, far, far distant, he thought he could see a horse and rider.

The Hunter coursed, his stallion dancing over the earth, his hounds streaming out behind him.

He was his mother’s son.

Behind the hounds ambled a bear cub, its mouth gaping in a cheerful grin.

And behind man and stallion and hounds and bear cub streamed millions upon millions of flowers, erupting from the sterile earth, waving their beauty into sun and wind.

Qeteb turned away, preparing to run—if he could, in this damn mud—and was stunned into immobility.

Before him stood a beautiful man with curly black hair and dark blue eyes, his face awash with pity and love. At his back, her hands resting on the man’s shoulders, stood a woman with bright curly golden hair, and an expression of peace and contentment upon her lovely face.

Qeteb tried to back away, but the sticky earth clung to his feet and ankles, and he found he could not move.

“You are trapped,” said Caelum.

“No!” Qeteb said. “No!”

“You shall not win,” said RiverStar, and she leaned close to Caelum and planted a soft kiss on his neck, one of her hands rubbing caressingly up into his hair.

Her brother turned his face slightly, and smiled for her, then looked back to Qeteb.

“You
cannot
win,” he said. “Don’t you know that?”

“I won!” Qeteb shouted, his hands clenched into great fists at his sides. “DragonStar’s witches failed!”

RiverStar laughed, soft and prettily and deep in her throat, and that sound drove Qeteb into rage.

“I won!”
he screamed, trying to reach the pair and tear them apart. But the field would not let him move, and Caelum and RiverStar stood maddeningly undamaged just two paces before him.

“I won! I won! I won!”

“No,” said Caelum. “You did not. All of DragonStar’s witches won. Faraday won, for she chose self-sacrifice rather than let a child she loved die.”

“But the child still died!”

“Nevertheless,” RiverStar said, her voice hard, “she won. She offered herself for Love. Sheol had to let Faraday go for you to win.”

“And those two demented fools who rescued that cub? They were crushed to death, damn it!”

Caelum laughed. “Death means nothing,” he said, “for do not I and my sister stand here before you?”

“They also,” said RiverStar, “offered themselves for Love. They were prepared to lose the confrontation rather than let the cub die. Mot and Barzula, on the other hand, preferred to sacrifice Love. They
lost
.”

“All DragonStar’s witches won,” Caelum said. “Your fate is assured.”

And then he turned and gathered RiverStar into his arms, and kissed her, and then they both faded from view as Qeteb roared and screamed and bellowed.

No! It could not be!

He turned again, vaguely hoping that somewhere behind him he would see his five companions riding to his rescue—where were they when he needed them?—but there was nothing but the ploughed field, and the much, much closer horse and rider.

The clamour of hounds rose up about his ears.

Qeteb set his back to the Hunter, his eyes jerking at the confusing patterns in the plough lines before him, and the field allowed the Midday Demon to continue his hopeless slog through its clinging earth.