Crusader. Novel by Sara Douglass

change the expression of his face. He was at peace with himself, even though his mind was consumed

with the image of millions of stars and galaxies tumbling through the universe, chased by a great

dark cloud with the stinging tail of a scorpion raised threateningly behind it.

Thus had Evil subverted every good ever created.

Thus had the Star Dance been chased by the TimeKeeper Demons since the creation of the universe

itself.

Now was the time to end it.

Now. Here. In this time. With this man, this Crusader.

And then … then …

… how many aeons had the Star Dance waited? How many worlds, solar systems, galaxies

torn apart had it watched?

… then could the Garden be created anew. And this time, without the scorpion’s tail sting of

temptation.

Only the Infinite Field of Flowers gently waving into eternity.

Faraday turned her head slightly, and she seemed to smile, even though her facial muscles did not move.

There, she could smell him.

And then he was behind her, and she could sense the sway of his body and its warmth, and her lips

parted, and she shifted very slightly on the chair in remembrance.

He put his hand on her shoulder, and she relaxed back into his love. He bent swiftly down, and

kissed her full on her mouth.

Leagh, Gwendylyr and Goldman lifted their faces and smiled with pure joy.

“DragonStar!” Leagh said.

He nodded, embracing each one with the warmth of his gaze, then looked at Dare Wing.

The birdman had turned his head in DragonStar’s direction and opened his eyes. They were red, and

horribly consumed with the weight of his sickness.

And yet, somehow, they were still glad.

DragonStar slipped past Faraday and entered the circle. He paused, then squatted down by

DareWing’s side. “I need you alive,” he said.

“Good,” croaked Dare Wing.

DragonStar grinned, then leaned down his hand and rested it on the skin of DareWing’s chest.

“Do you feel like an adventure?” he said.

“For you,” Dare Wing said, “I would fetch the coals that feed the flames in the firepits of the

AfterLife.”

DragonStar’s hand rose to cup DareWing’s face. “From you,” he murmured, “I require far more. A

flower a day from the field that surrounds you.”

Both men smiled with love, and then DragonStar rose, and addressed the four witches in the circle.

“Yet the field that surrounds this dome,” he said, “is a field of bare earth. It has been turned over and

ribbed and ridged, but it lies barren. What does it represent?”

“Us,” said Goldman, who delighted in such philosophical dabblings. “We have been ploughed, and

the seeds laid within us, but we have yet to flower.”

“Aye,” DragonStar said.

“Perhaps we cannot,” Gwendylyr said, “until Dare Wing is healed.”

DragonStar nodded, but did not say anything.

“We must heal Dare Wing,” Faraday said, her voice quiet and introspective. “Not DragonStar. We

must.”

Again DragonStar nodded.

“And I must heal myself,” Dare Wing said.

“Stretch your wings,” DragonStar said. “All of you.”

And he stepped back out of the circle.

An expression of mild panic crossed Leagh’s face, and one hand tightened briefly over her belly.

“How do we do this?”

“We all have Acharite magic within us,” Faraday said, “now freed, as we have all come through

death.”

DragonStar had now walked very quietly out of the dome, and was wandering through the

ploughed field. The Alaunt had settled down into a restful, watchful pack to one side of the dome,

while the Star Stallion rested his weight on one hip and dozed, ignoring the lizard who lay

stretched out behind him idly swatting at the stallion’s twitching tail.

A tiny star fell from the stallion’s mane and fizzled momentarily in the damp earth.

“How strange,” Faraday continued, her voice still very quiet, “that we have the use of Acharite

magic, and that DragonStar has placed us within a field of ploughed earth, and has emphasised these

things to us.”

Of the others, only DareWing had enough memories of the old Achar to truly understand what

Faraday alluded to.

“You speak of the old god of Achar,” he said, then paused to cough violently. “Artor the

Ploughman.”

“Artor was evil!” Leagh and Gwendylyr both said together.

“Yes,” Faraday said, “but perhaps we should not disregard the influence Artor would have had

on the literal physical

realm of Achar, as also the influence that that would have had on our power.”

She paused, trying to sort out her thoughts. “Of the five of us, it is Dare Wing who is sick. He has a

mixture of blood, Icarii and Acharite … and maybe the Artor influence that — possibly — exists in all of

us has sickened him nigh unto death.”

“I thought DragonStar said it was ground fever,” Gwendylyr said, frowning.

“Ground fever is the outward face of the sickness,” Goldman said, catching Faraday’s train of

thought, “but the stain on DareWing’s spirit is the Artorite stain. It would affect him far more than any of

us.”

“And is that why this field has not yet flowered?” Leagh said. “And why DareWing cannot get

better? We must expel the remaining influence of Artor?”

“Yes!” Faraday said, and the others all smiled, for the explanation felt good to them. “Yes. We must

reject the rib and ridge of the ploughed earth.”

“How?” said Gwendylyr, ever concerned with the practical.

There was a silence.

“We must ask ourselves a question,” Goldman said. “What is it that remains within us of Artor the

Plough God?”

Another silence.

“Faraday,” DareWing said, his voice now nearly a death whisper, “of all of us here, you have been

the only one who has been thoroughly taught in the ways of Artor the Ploughman. I only fought

against it, and Goldman …”

“Was but a boy of twelve when Azhure ran Artor into his grave,” Goldman said. “Faraday, what can

you tell us?”

Faraday sat in silence for a while, remembering her childhood lessons in the Way of the Plough, and

her allegiance to, and love for, Artor the Ploughman. The months, months that, in all, amounted

to years, she’d spent studying the Book of Field and Furrow. How blind I was, she thought.

But the faith of the Plough was so comforting. Why?

“We loathed and feared the landscape,” she eventually said, “and Artor gave us a face

and a name for that fear. Untamed landscape, mountain, forest and marsh, was the haunt of evil

creatures — the Forbidden — who were undoubtedly Planning to swarm over all that was good

and beautiful … all o ver us.”

DareWing’s mouth curled in a bitter smile, and he turned his head aside.

“Having defined our fear — the wild landscape and all that lived within it — we felt comforted, and

so we took to the forests with our axes, and to the mountains with our armies, and to the marshes with

our engineers, and we pushed back the wild landscape as far as we could. We tamed the earth and made

it our slave.”

“We enslaved it with the plough,” Gwendylyr said.

“Yes,” Faraday said, “with the plough, and the neat square fields, and the straight and

tightly-controlled furrow.”

“‘Furrow wide, furrow deep’,” Goldman said. “I remember my father saying that constantly.”

“Must we make amends?” Gwendylyr asked.

Faraday looked to Dare Wing. “Must we?”

“No,” he eventually said. “Not as such. The earth does not require ‘amends’.”

“It merely requires us to let go our hatred and our fear,” Goldman said.

“But I don’t hate and fear the landscape!” Leagh said.

“There is still something deep within each of us,” Faraday said, “that corrupts us. It is the legacy of a

thousand generations of unthinking worship of Artor. We must let that corruption go.”

“How?” Leagh said. She looked about at the other witches in the circle, then down at DareWing. He

looked worse than she’d ever seen him, and Leagh realised that they must correct whatever was wrong

very shortly.

Faraday smiled. “I think I know,” she said, and in the ploughed field DragonStar raised his

head and smiled also.

“We still fear some aspect of the landscape,” Faraday said. “All of us. We must confront the fear,

and let it go.”

“But —” Gwendylyr began.

“We all fear some aspect of the landscape,” Faraday said again, and looked at Gwendylyr steadily.

“All of us.”

“I know what I fear,” DareWing said, but Faraday would not let him finish, either.

She stopped him with a gentle hand, leaving her chair to kneel beside him. “DareWing, I

think I know what you fear, and I think I know how strong that fear is.”

Faraday grinned, but sadly. “No wonder you have ground fever.” Then she raised her head and

looked at the other three, keeping her hand on DareWing’s shoulder. “We must confront our

fears first, and then, stronger, be ready to support Dare Wing. Goldman?”