Pilgrim (53 page)

“Movement!” Sheol cried again. “Quick, Barzula! The boy!”

Barzula stepped forth, strode up the hillock until he was just outside the confines of the whirling wind. Then, in an abrupt movement, he hurled the boy inside.

Instantly, blood and flesh whipped out of the whirlwind as the boy’s body was torn apart by the thorns inside. A piece of the ghastly meat struck WolfStar in the face and he gagged, reminded forcibly of the moment Zenith had flung Niah’s poor dead body at him.

No-one else minded. The Demons and StarLaughter were leaning forward in their eagerness, their eyes bright, their breasts heaving with excitement.

“When?” StarLaughter cried.

“
Now!
” Mot screamed, dancing from foot to foot in an obscene gig, and as he screamed, so a man stepped forth from the bloodied rose wind.

WolfStar’s mouth slowly dropped open.

What now stood on the hillock was a nightmarish parody of an Icarii male. He was over-tall, and his naked body was obscenely roped with thick muscles which bulged so thick at chest and arm and thigh that WolfStar could not see how the man could possibly walk. From his back sprouted fully developed golden wings—
too
fully developed, for they were half as large again as a normal Icarii male’s, and feathers sprouted unevenly from flight muscles that bulged as thick as they did on the man’s body. The hands that dangled at the end of each arm were like spades; the fingers were as long and as thick as every other appendage, but flexible nevertheless.

They would miss no crevice that could be exploited.

The man’s face was curiously flattened, with a broad and thick nose and forehead under dense, dull copper curls, and light violet eyes that were narrow and cunning—almost piggy—rather than bright and clear.

WolfStar looked closely. They remained lifeless, for Qeteb still had to be animated with soul, but they were chilling for all that they lacked spirit. The mouth was wide, its lips thick,
red and moist, a pink flicker of tongue appearing between large, crowded white teeth.

Sheol turned slightly so she could see WolfStar. “The girl,” she whispered.

“No!” WolfStar cried. “No!”

“Why?” Sheol said. “Is this not what you wanted? Mot! The girl!”

Mot stepped forward, the girl slung over his shoulder, but instead of hurling her into the rose wind as Barzula had done the boy, he handed her to the Qeteb-man.

“Take her,” he said, and the Qeteb-man held out his arms and took her weight from Mot.

“The wind,” Sheol commanded, and the Qeteb-man turned, but not before WolfStar had seen him run his spade-hands over the girl’s breasts and belly…exploring, his body instinctively reacting to the feel of the female flesh under his hands.

No!
WolfStar screamed in his mind, but at that instant the Qeteb-man flung his Niah into the rose wind, and particles of flesh and blood again streamed out across the wasteland. When Niah finally emerged, completed in body, if not in spirit, WolfStar had to turn his face aside.

She was flawless, beautiful. Her alabaster body was female physical perfection, and glossy black hair streamed down her back to her buttocks.

Her face was stunning in its loveliness, fragile and yet strong at the same moment.

WolfStar knew in that instant that he’d lost. The Demons would use Niah, and her potential power, to their own ends. WolfStar felt nauseous: sick with self-disgust, sick with horror at how his plan to save Tencendor would now likely condemn it.

What had he done?

“There are many kinds of death,” Sheol again informed WolfStar, her voice almost kindly, “and you shall now experience another one. She is female,” she said to the Qeteb-man. “Take her.”

The Qeteb-man seized the woman, his all-encompassing hands groping and kneading her unresisting flesh as he pushed her to the ground. The Qeteb-man dropped his weight upon her, forcing her to his requirements without any thought to the damage he might thereby do to her body. Coldly, his vacant eyes fixed on some distant point, the Qeteb-man drove himself roughly inside the Niah-woman and began to grunt and thrust, and each grunt and thrust ate into WolfStar’s soul, tore into his being, and he lowered his head and wept as Niah lay on her bed of thorns, her hips and breasts jerking and jiggling with every movement of the Demon’s frantically plunging body.

There, in that desiccated rose garden, Qeteb took his bride as WolfStar raved, StarDrifter and Isfrael watched in morbid fascination, and the Goodwife Renkin, still atop the ridge, climbed to her feet, her face hard, and descended into the forest below.

D
eep in the earth beneath Carlon, a writhing, twisting mass of voles, rats, and sundry burrowing insects and rodents continued to scrape their way through the earth. Among them moved the patchy-bald rat, biting and nipping, driving them on, on, on, for the day was coming, the day when the Lord would rise, and preparations must be made and souls must be in place for that moment.

The Day of Resurrection.

Above, the night was deep and moonless.

Drago stood at the open doorway by which he had entered Carlon, his sack tied securely to his belt. Drago had begun to think of it as his weapons sack; his father may have once slung axe and sword from his belt, now his reviled youngest son slung a hessian bag.

The Wolven was slung over Drago’s left shoulder, the quiver of arrows hung down his back. In his right hand Drago held his staff, and in the other he held Katie.

By his feet crouched the feathered lizard. Its growth had stopped, and it had now stabilised into a form slightly larger than a mastiff hound, but still retaining the shape of a lizard.

Behind Drago came Faraday, wrapped in a bright scarlet cloak that she had hunted all afternoon for in the wardrobes of the palace, and with two blankets under her arm; Leagh, equally wrapped in a thick and warm black cloak and also
with a blanket; Zared, his worried eyes rarely leaving his wife; and finally, Theod clad in light chain mail under his cloak and with his sword already drawn in his hand.

He’d heard of the eels that had attacked Drago’s boat on the way over from Spiredore. The gods alone knew what else the Demons might launch at them. Theod did not want anything stopping him from reaching Gwendylyr this night.

He concentrated all his thoughts on her, and pushed the memory of their two sons to the dim recesses of his mind. They were gone, sacrificed to Drago’s unexplained plans, and Theod would not allow himself to dwell on them any more.

“Well?” an anxious voice asked from far back in the dark passageway.

“The boat is still here, Herme,” Drago replied, and he stepped carefully down, wishing that if he’d retained only one thing from his Icarii heritage it could have been their exquisite grace and balance.

The feathered lizard leapt in, causing the boat to rock violently, and Drago planted his staff firmly down and leaned on it, silently cursing the lizard with every gutter and kitchen oath he’d ever known.

Once the boat had settled, he laid the staff in the belly of the boat, lifted Katie in and saw her safely seated, helped Faraday and then Leagh into the boat, and seated himself, leaving Zared and Theod to manage as best they could.

Herme appeared in the dark hole of the doorway. “Be careful,” he said. “And return quickly.”

“Keep safe,” Drago said, then briefly smiled, nodded, and leaned his weight into the oars, sliding the boat silently out onto the waters of Grail Lake.

Faraday drew the cloak yet tighter about her and shivered. Animals of all shapes, sizes and breed lined the shoreline about the city’s walls. Men and women, as naked and vile as Leagh had been, crept back and forth, snatching at themselves or at whoever came close. All the demented
were relatively silent, whether because of the night or some unknown plan, Faraday did not know, but they shuffled and moved in undulating waves, constantly pushing against the walls.

Pray we get back in time, Drago thought. He’d felt the increase in the power of the Demons, and knew they’d been successful at Fernbrake Lake.

How long would it take them to get to Grail Lake? Over a week, but less than two.

Not long. Not long.

Drago pulled harder on the oars.

The gigantic eels humped their bodies out of the water as the boat moved across the Lake, but they did not attack. Perhaps they could see the feathered lizard sitting sentinel in the bow of the boat, or perhaps their attention was focused on something within the Lake, for they rarely lifted their heads to watch the boat’s progress.

“There is something different about the Lake,” Faraday said, and Leagh nodded.

“I feel it, too. There is a…a thickness…here which I do not understand.”

Faraday trailed a hand through the water. “A thickness…” she repeated, and then wiped her hand on her cloak with an expression of distaste.

Drago watched both women, sitting directly opposite him, with careful eyes. Leagh, while cautious about the danger surrounding them and their mission this night, was nevertheless serene and calm. She had come through death and found nothing but peace.

Faraday, on the other hand, was as jumpy as a cat. Drago remembered how sure she’d seemed when first he’d come back through the Star Gate. Gradually that confidence had dissipated.

It was him, Drago knew that. They’d fallen unwanted into love, and he thought that neither of them would find much happiness in it. Faraday did not want love, it had
betrayed her too much already. And he? For weeks Drago had thought all he wanted was Faraday and her love, but after their conversation on the parapets, he now knew that even if she
did
come to him, would it be to him that she came, or the resemblance in movement and expression to his father?

Would she ever get over her love for Axis? She said she had, but Drago did not believe her. It continued to cripple her life, and Axis, utterly unintentionally, had returned to cripple Drago’s as well. How pleased Axis would be, Drago thought, if only he knew.

Drago watched Faraday’s eyes skim over the water, and remembered the passion in those eyes as she’d spoken of Axis and the nights they’d spent in love.

Would she ever look thus when she spoke of him?

He grimaced, and dropped his face, and bent back to the oars.

They reached the far shore without incident, and the moment the boat scraped against the gravel bottom of the Lake, all knew what was different about it.

The level of the Lake had dropped considerably, possibly by about the height of a man. Now they had several paces of dry lake bed to walk across to reach what had once been the shoreline and the now-waterless pier by Spiredore.

“But,” Faraday said, turning about on the exposed lake bed in consternation, “how can this be? When we arrived here several days ago the water level was as it always had been.”

“The Lake is drying out,” Drago said. “The TimeKeepers have seized what they need from Fernbrake, and now all that remains for them is what lies here.”

Zared looked intently at Drago. “Will the city remain safe? The gate we left by is hardly fortified. If the swarms of animals outside are able to reach it…”

“It will not dry out completely for a while yet,” Drago said, and turned for Spiredore. “And we shall return within the day.”

Spiredore, ever faithful to those who served the craft, took them safely to the Western Ranges. A series of steep and narrow stairs deposited them before a narrow corridor that led into an indiscernible blackness.

“Where are we?” Theod asked. His voice was strained, whether from nervousness inherent in everyone’s first experience of Spiredore, or what he thought he might find at the end of the journey, no-one knew.

“I imagine we will find out at the end of this passageway,” Drago said.

They walked down the corridor in a tight group, their steps slow, their hands groping along the walls so that they might not be surprised by a sudden drop in elevation, or a turn.

Even the feathered lizard, normally so exuberant, slunk directly behind Drago, his talons now and then flaring and lighting the gloom.

Drago paused as his hand slid from the smoothness of dry plaster to the dampness of cave rock. He blinked, and then squinted into the almost impenetrable darkness.

There was a faint, rough oval of light ahead.

A cave mouth.

“We have arrived, I think,” Drago said, “in the cave in which you and yours were so cruelly trapped, Theod. Be careful now.”

There was a scrape of steel as Zared and Theod drew their swords, but Drago motioned the lizard forward. He would be their best protection.

“It’s cold,” Leagh murmured, and, like Faraday, hugged her cloak tight about her.

Drago motioned them to remain still as the lizard snuffled about the cave—gradually becoming less featureless as everyone’s eyes adjusted to the night gloom—and then, as the lizard’s body relaxed, led them towards the mouth of the cave.

“The twenty thousand were scattered throughout the ranges,” Theod said. “How will you—”

“They will all be relatively close,” Drago said. “This cave was the lodestone, the trap, and they would all have been caught here.”

“But wouldn’t they have started to move elsewhere?” Zared said. “To Carlon, perhaps?”

“Not enough time,” Drago said. “They would have waited until the entire twenty thousand had been turned, and that could only just have been accomplished. Theod…how long is it since you left the cave?”

Theod calculated swiftly. “Six or seven days, or thereabouts.”

Drago nodded. “A week? Then all groups must have come through, but only just.”

“But they still must be scattered—” Theod began.

“Then we must ‘unscatter’ them,” Drago said. “For what I am about to do, I need them all close.”

Theod turned away, raising his hands in frustration, but Drago ignored him. He squatted down before Katie, and took her shoulders in his hands, staring into her face.

“Katie?” he asked softly. “Will you do it?”

She nodded silently, her face sober.

“I will protect you,” Drago said, and the girl smiled and flung her arms about his neck, planting a kiss on his cheek.

Taken aback, Drago disentangled the girl’s arms.

“We will need a large open space,” he said. “Theod, was there anywhere near here that can fit a crowd?”

“There is a grassy flat at the foot of this hill,” Theod’s voice was becoming harder by the moment. “But it will not fit twenty thousand.”

“No,” Drago said, keeping his own voice even, “but enough for a crowd of some thousands at least? Yes? Good. And there are gullies leading towards this grassy flat?”

“Yes! Gods damn you, Drago, what are you going to do?”

Drago stepped up to Theod and took his shoulders as he had just done Katie’s.

“Theod,” he said, and gave the man’s shoulders a little shake. “Just believe.”

Drago wore a gentle smile on his face that lit his eyes with warmth, and far more than the words it was that which relaxed Theod.

He nodded slightly. “I am worried for Gwendylyr,” he said. “All this time, running about the hills…and in what state?”

“Theod.” Now Zared spoke up. “Whatever else we have seen, it has not been corpses lying about. The Demons seize their minds and their souls, but they leave their bodies…intact.”

Zared had been about to say “alive”, but alive did not quite describe the state of those held in the Demons’ thrall, did it?

“We will
find
her, Theod,” Drago finished, and Theod gave another nod.

“Good.” Drago walked over to Katie and held out his hand. She took it, her face once again sober, and together they walked towards the entrance.

The feathered lizard ambled after them, but when the others made also to follow, Drago asked them to stay.

“You can see well enough from the mouth of the cave, and for the moment I would like you to remain there.”

Drago and the girl walked carefully down the slope of the hill, occasionally stumbling over a rock hidden in a tussock of grass or night shadow. When they reached the bottom, Drago spent a few minutes studying the terrain.

The grassy flat spread in a rough oval shape perhaps a hundred paces east and west and some sixty paces wide. At the far western end a ravine stretched back from the flat into unseen darkness, and four or five steep-sided and narrow ravines snaked into the flat from the east and west.

“Perfect!” Drago murmured, then he squatted down beside Katie. He was nervous, for this would be not only dangerous for all concerned—and especially Katie if he
didn’t get the protective enchantment right—but would tax his own skill considerably.

Katie studied him, then reached out and took his hand. “You have come a long way from your pastry magics,” she said.

“You know about that?”

“I know everything.
You
know that.”

Drago sighed. Katie might only look like a tiny girl, but she was as old as the land itself. “Yes. I know that. But I thought
some
small details might have escaped your attention.”

“Do this,” Katie said, “for whoever still roams raving when Qeteb is fully resurrected will be beyond all of our help.”

Now Drago looked truly startled. “I did not know that! Gods! I should have done more to—”

Katie covered his hand in both of hers. “You wasted too many years in self-recrimination, Drago. For now, you can only do your best.”

He nodded, then stood up, hefting the staff in his left hand. He glanced up the hill. Everyone was standing at the top of the slope looking down: both women waited in stillness, the men shifted impatiently.

Drago looked back to Katie, who had now sat herself cross-legged on the grass. He thought of the enchantment he would need, and almost in the same moment Drago felt the movement of the staff under his left hand, and with his right sketched the enchantment in the air.

He opened his mouth to ask the lizard to make it visible, but the lizard also acted almost without conscious thought. He lifted his right foreclaw and re-sketched the symbol in light.

Above, Leagh took Faraday’s arm in a tight hand. “Do you know,” she whispered, “that symbol almost means something to me.”

Faraday frowned…what could she…ah! She too could somehow feel the symbol reaching out for her, communicating with her in some undefinable way.

“Protection,” both women muttered at the same time.

“It is an enchantment of protection,” Faraday added, then shook her head slightly. What was going on? It felt as if that enchantment was reaching out fingers into her mind, doing something, or appealing to something, but she couldn’t—

“It’s the Acharite magic in us!” Leagh said, still keeping her voice low. “We can understand it because we have both seen the field of flowers!”