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 deadl”
“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. Doit!”
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.